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trike's review
2.0
I'm waffling between 2 and 3 stars for this. I didn't hate it but it does have serious issues.
On the one hand the basic idea is interesting: Earth was invaded by aliens and fought them off, but in the process the planet was ruined. At first it seems like the reason for the invasion is a lame cliche of the aliens wanting our water, but it turns out that's a secondary goal.
Our main character, Lucas, comes across a wrecked alien ship which has an alien desperately trying to repair it so he can leave the planet. After an action scene where the hero fends off attackers and spares the alien for some reason. Lucas kills two men and knocks out a woman. The alien brings the woman inside and convinces Lucas that he's actually a good guy by showing Lucas a recording where the alien tried to protect kids from the invaders. That was a neat way to get the alien and man to team up, I thought.
But then he ruins it by making the woman a literal supermodel. I get the argument that she used her feminine wiles to survive the end of the world, but it's just such a cliche.
I wasn't sold on some of the other backstory. He says that religious people suffered such a psychic shock they committed suicide en masse. I'm sure there might be some of that, but humans are amazingly adept at rationalization. Either extraterrestrials would be seamlessly incorporated into their dogma (as the Catholic Church and Mormons are already prepared to do) or they'd be rejected as tools of Satan. But giving up across the board and committing mass suicide? Nope. Don't buy it.
Much better to simply say, "Religious leaders were just starting to grapple with the theological aspects of confirmed alien intelligence when the arguments were rendered moot: E.T. attacked. Humanity was too busy scrambling for survival to consider existential implications."
There were little inconsistencies which niggled as well. Early on our protagonist sprints up the side of a crater, despite being weak from years of hunger and days of thirst, while experiencing crushing heat.
Probably the biggest issue was the fact our last man and last woman rescue the last baby... and then basically ignore the kid for long stretches of time. It made me wonder if Tassi has even spent an evening babysitting a baby. They need constant attention. Yet here baby Noah is basically treated like a cat. Give him a ball and a saucer of water and go off to do your own thing. The kid will be fine. I don't think they even changed his diaper more than twice over the many months they were aboard the starship.
Also, the whole not-eating thing. Metabolizing vaporized nutrients sounds good, but the human body is designed to eat and drink.
On the flip side of the coin, the sleep pods designed for the aliens has deleterious psychological effects on humans, which leads to complications later. That was a nice touch, and I was sold on why Asha would subject herself to the thing, as well as the side-effects. But then she recovers too easily once the super-intelligent alien puts his mind to the problem.
This is my problem with the book in a nutshell: on one hand there are really interesting ideas, but on the other there are some dumb ones that drag it down. I could only imagine if this were by Scalzi or Niven we'd have more of the former and less of the latter.
On the one hand the basic idea is interesting: Earth was invaded by aliens and fought them off, but in the process the planet was ruined. At first it seems like the reason for the invasion is a lame cliche of the aliens wanting our water, but it turns out that's a secondary goal.
Spoiler
The real reason is that they've been in a millennia-long and galaxy-spanning war against humans. Tassi hints that Earth might be the source of the humans elsewhere in the galaxy, but gives no explanation for that.Our main character, Lucas, comes across a wrecked alien ship which has an alien desperately trying to repair it so he can leave the planet. After an action scene where the hero fends off attackers and spares the alien for some reason. Lucas kills two men and knocks out a woman. The alien brings the woman inside and convinces Lucas that he's actually a good guy by showing Lucas a recording where the alien tried to protect kids from the invaders. That was a neat way to get the alien and man to team up, I thought.
But then he ruins it by making the woman a literal supermodel. I get the argument that she used her feminine wiles to survive the end of the world, but it's just such a cliche.
I wasn't sold on some of the other backstory. He says that religious people suffered such a psychic shock they committed suicide en masse. I'm sure there might be some of that, but humans are amazingly adept at rationalization. Either extraterrestrials would be seamlessly incorporated into their dogma (as the Catholic Church and Mormons are already prepared to do) or they'd be rejected as tools of Satan. But giving up across the board and committing mass suicide? Nope. Don't buy it.
Much better to simply say, "Religious leaders were just starting to grapple with the theological aspects of confirmed alien intelligence when the arguments were rendered moot: E.T. attacked. Humanity was too busy scrambling for survival to consider existential implications."
There were little inconsistencies which niggled as well. Early on our protagonist sprints up the side of a crater, despite being weak from years of hunger and days of thirst, while experiencing crushing heat.
Probably the biggest issue was the fact our last man and last woman rescue the last baby... and then basically ignore the kid for long stretches of time. It made me wonder if Tassi has even spent an evening babysitting a baby. They need constant attention. Yet here baby Noah is basically treated like a cat. Give him a ball and a saucer of water and go off to do your own thing. The kid will be fine. I don't think they even changed his diaper more than twice over the many months they were aboard the starship.
Also, the whole not-eating thing. Metabolizing vaporized nutrients sounds good, but the human body is designed to eat and drink.
On the flip side of the coin, the sleep pods designed for the aliens has deleterious psychological effects on humans, which leads to complications later. That was a nice touch, and I was sold on why Asha would subject herself to the thing, as well as the side-effects. But then she recovers too easily once the super-intelligent alien puts his mind to the problem.
This is my problem with the book in a nutshell: on one hand there are really interesting ideas, but on the other there are some dumb ones that drag it down. I could only imagine if this were by Scalzi or Niven we'd have more of the former and less of the latter.
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