Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

A House Between Earth and the Moon by Rebecca Scherm

2 reviews

schnaucl's review

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adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I really liked this novel.   The climate catastrophes on Earth seem frighteningly realistic.  

The way the Sensus acted and the way people interacted with their phones also seemed sadly realistic.  I'd like to think more people would think about the loss of privacy, but look at how people use their mobile phones today, or how many people have a Ring doorbell or an Amazon Echo or a smartwatch.  We're all too happy to give up our privacy in the name of convenience or because we like tracking everything about ourselves. 

The ultrawealthy thinking they can just buy their way out of the climate catastrophe also feels true to life. 
As does the willingness to abandon everyone else on Earth to a slow death by climate catastrophe.   I do think it would be interesting to see what happens after the billionaires have been there a while and reality sets in.


Both the characters and the story were really interesting.
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tigger89's review

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adventurous tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Overall, I enjoyed this read. It's not a terribly optimistic piece(no, I don't consider
"the children will carry on the fight"
as an optimistic ending), so if you're inclined to doom I'd give this one a pass. A major focus of the work is just how badly corporations, by virtue of their very structure and motivations, can screw things up. Every time you think you've seen the worst of it, another layer peels back and oh no, there's something worse. I found the criticism to be very on-point, especially with regard to how employees will act when pressed beyond reason and how we deal(or don't deal) with surveillance. I also thoroughly enjoyed the ambiguity of
how much of what happened with Mary Agnes was happenstance or her own free will, and how much was her being manipulated by the algo. Same goes for the development of the invasive algae species.


A flaw that I had a hard time looking past was the "near future" setting of this novel. The author tried very hard to avoid setting a hard "this is what year it is," but some of the early chapters had dates in them. To me, at least, things just seemed to be moving too fast, both in terms of technology(phones and space station) and climate situation. I believe the story may have been set in 2033(that date was in a computer record one of the characters opened), but that just felt too early to me, and it broke my immersion a bit.

There's a fair bit of casual background LGB rep in this. Some of the people on the station mention previous same-gender partners, and there's a gay family. However, the viewpoint characters are, to my recollection, all depicted as straight.
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