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P.K. Tyler is the author of Speculative Fiction and other Genre Bending novels. She’s also published works as Pavarti K. Tyler and had projects appear on the USA TODAY Bestseller’s List.
“Tyler is essentially the indie scene’s Margaret Atwood; she incorporates sci-fi elements into her novels, which deal with topics such as spirituality, gender, sexuality and power dynamics.” – IndieReader
Pav attended Smith College and graduated with a degree in Theatre. She lived in New York, where she worked as a Dramaturge, Assistant Director and Production Manager on productions both on and off-Broadway. Later, Pavarti went to work in the finance industry for several international law firms. Now located in Baltimore Maryland, she lives with her husband, two daughters and two terrible dogs. When not penning science fiction books and other speculative fiction novels, she twists her mind by writing horror and erotica.
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Reviewed by Nathan W. Toronto for Readers' Favorite
P.K. Tyler's The Jakkattu Vector offers as creative a premise as you'll find in science fiction: an alien race, the Mezna, has come to save humanity from its reckless disregard for Earth's ecosystem. Now, natural-born humans are confined to reservations on what little habitable land remains, in places as far flung as Greenland, Lapland, and Argentine. In contrast to the penury of humans' reservation life, Mezna-human hybrids live in gleaming cities with access to plentiful food and medical care, where they are protected from the toxic environment that haunts everyday life on the reservations. Tyler's most creative innovation, however, is that the main character is neither Mezna nor human, but Jakkattu, a humanoid race of aliens that the Mezna have enslaved on another planet. This Jakkattu character, Sabaal, escapes from imprisonment, where she is subject to ruthless experimentation and torture, to find a world full of contradictions between human, hybrid, and Mezna life. The ultimate irony is that through her (and other characters') quest for freedom, Sabaal learns what it means to be human.
I couldn't put this book down. Tyler is at her best in action scenes, of which there are plenty. She doesn't dwell too much on needless details, and she has a knack for putting the reader into the setting with unique character voices. I especially liked the English dialect she developed to set apart the reservation humans; it makes their plight more believable without distracting from the main story. In addition, the book is well-edited, and the publisher, Evolved Publishing, has taken obvious care in marketing The Jakkattu Vector just right. If I had one complaint, it's that characters occasionally do things that seemed to defy physical laws or linguistic tendencies, but these moments were very minor. Besides, who am I to complain? I'm a political scientist who predicted a Clinton landslide in 2016, so I'm clearly no judge of historical plausibility. The world that P.K. Tyler creates in the Jakkattu Vector is believable, and I really appreciate her genuine, human voice. To Tyler, people are people, no matter how they look or where they're from, and any reader who welcomes a meditation on what it means to be human should pick up The Jakkattu Vector.
