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mapboy's review
4.0
A lot of feeling like British bakeoff is taking place on The Heart of Gold, wish there was another set-piece/plot location to drive the story a little further, but a good read nonetheless.
nnbb's review
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
jenn_the_unicorn's review
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
adancewithbooks's review
adventurous
medium-paced
2.25
With a title as You Sexy Thing, this book was bound to get a lot of attention. I was interested as well but it took me a while to get to it. I'm not sure I should have.
With the title and knowing this is about old soldiers getting roped back into something, my curiousity was quite taken. We meet Niko and her crew as they are setting up their restaurant for an exciting night. They were only able to leave the service of the Hive Mind as soldiers if they could show that they were artists. In this case they went for cooking as an art. So they had to start a restaurant. This night was exciting because a food critic would be visiting. They needed to do well. Unfortunately a person gets shipped to them in a crate and the station explodes. Oops.
It had a lot of potential in ideas but a lot of it fell flat because of the writing. It felt like it was trying an omniscient point of view but it was still too far in characters head for that, which was mostly Nio. It created a very far removed feel from the characters. Not true omniscient but also not a deep enogh focus. I didn't feel like I was truly getting to know them. We'd be in this scene with this character and then the next paragraph we would be in another scene with another character.
We got a tiny bit of this and a tiny bit of that. But never did we go in depth into a character. The death of a character and the betrayal of a character were barely dealt with. So nothing that happened got much of an emotional reaction from me as a reader.
Which is a shame because there are a lot of great ideas here. Many different alien races, the hive mind sounds like an interesting concept and a potential enemy. The bio ships like You Sexy Thing that they traveled on, created an extra dimension to their interactions. But a lot of the rest needed a lot of work.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Death, and Murder
Minor: War
wgibson624's review
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
m_petranoff's review
adventurous
medium-paced
2.75
An interesting science fiction world that tells far more than it shows. I read the entire thing and there were moments of delightful interactions and interesting ideas, but they were threaded together with plodding dialogue that went out of its way to explain the world to me when it didn't really need to. A promising premise that doesn't deliver.