Duatero
Shadowpaw Press / 7 October 2022

Duateroby Brad C. AndersonPublished by Shadowpaw Press RepriseReview by Toby A. Welch$23.95 ISBN 9781989398395 I must admit that sci-fi isn’t my go-to choice for fiction. Sure, I loved the X-Files TV show and thoroughly enjoyed reading Ender’s Game and Dune but that was about the extent of it. Duatero changed that – science fiction will now be a genre I regularly reach for.  The title of this book confused me at first – what the heck is a duatero? Is it a sea creature with two legs? Some kind of two-sided crystal? Wrong on both counts. The title of this book is the name of an abandoned Earth colony. The fantastical world that Anderson created in Duatero is a fascinating place to be during the hours it takes to read the book. The main character, Majstro Falchilo Kredo, works furiously to protect Duatero from Malamiko, an ecosystem that is causing the colony’s crops to fail. Malamiko is threatening their way of life in every way; the possibility of Duatero having a future is dire. This well-written ecological apocalyptic tale is spellbinding. It is obvious that Anderson put a tremendous amount of thought and research into Duatero. It is flush with…