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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
fast-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
The main protagonist Hannah has a really bad first day at her job as a tour guide on a ship running sightseeing tours around a nebula near a space station. The space station and the thousands of people on it gets blown up along with the jump gate linking this area to the rest of occupied space. Some neat flying from the onboard Captain allows the ship and it's unfortunate passengers to evade the ship trying to eliminate them.
What follows is an OK story about the passengers, how they work together, argue, fight, piece together what's happened and why. Most of it is believable but parts of it do stretch credibility if I'm honest. Hannah being able to fly the ship after a brief onboard tutorial? Yeah right.
The action is fairly claustrophobic and at times quite tense but ultimately just OK without being exceptional. I would've enjoyed more background political intrigue (one of the passengers works for a Senator) but accept that's difficult to work into the narrative when the characters are so far from Earth etc.
What follows is an OK story about the passengers, how they work together, argue, fight, piece together what's happened and why. Most of it is believable but parts of it do stretch credibility if I'm honest. Hannah being able to fly the ship after a brief onboard tutorial? Yeah right.
The action is fairly claustrophobic and at times quite tense but ultimately just OK without being exceptional. I would've enjoyed more background political intrigue (one of the passengers works for a Senator) but accept that's difficult to work into the narrative when the characters are so far from Earth etc.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I won this as an ebook from goodreads giveaways. I'm picky about fiction so I tend not to enter many giveaways for it but this looked interesting and the horsehead nebula has personal meaning so I figured why not. I also have to say that I know we're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I love the cover art. I would say this book gets 3 stars for writing and story, but I bumped it up to 4 for representation.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. It held my interest well enough and there were elements I liked. There were also things that were just average overall and sometimes I felt that the book relied on thrilling events and crises in rapid succession no matter how unlikely in order to hold interest and make up for the lack of character development or rich representation.
The really great thing about this book that sets this author apart from a lot of white dude authors who dominate sci fi is that he wrote a book that passes the Bechdel test (at least two women characters who talk to each other about something other than a man,) the DuVernay test (black and other minority characters have fully realized lives rather than serving as scenery for white stories,) includes people of wide age ranges without infantilizing the elder or silencing the children, has queer characters (not my favorite representation of us but I'll take it,) and tackles disability a little bit here and there.
(Art and photo by Alisha Wormsley)
There is also a glimmer of hard sci fi that my miniscule understanding of theoretical physics doesn't allow me to speak to the accuracy of. But, I'm always happy when someone puts obvious effort into trying to create a real scenario scientifically as well.
I do wish Boffard would have focused a little less on the action and more on the people and politics. For a book this size we could have gotten to know people and their worlds more. But perhaps this is just a function of the sci fi thriller genre and action is prioritized.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. It held my interest well enough and there were elements I liked. There were also things that were just average overall and sometimes I felt that the book relied on thrilling events and crises in rapid succession no matter how unlikely in order to hold interest and make up for the lack of character development or rich representation.
The really great thing about this book that sets this author apart from a lot of white dude authors who dominate sci fi is that he wrote a book that passes the Bechdel test (at least two women characters who talk to each other about something other than a man,) the DuVernay test (black and other minority characters have fully realized lives rather than serving as scenery for white stories,) includes people of wide age ranges without infantilizing the elder or silencing the children, has queer characters (not my favorite representation of us but I'll take it,) and tackles disability a little bit here and there.
(Art and photo by Alisha Wormsley)
There is also a glimmer of hard sci fi that my miniscule understanding of theoretical physics doesn't allow me to speak to the accuracy of. But, I'm always happy when someone puts obvious effort into trying to create a real scenario scientifically as well.
I do wish Boffard would have focused a little less on the action and more on the people and politics. For a book this size we could have gotten to know people and their worlds more. But perhaps this is just a function of the sci fi thriller genre and action is prioritized.
A very entertaining, highly cinematic novel about a group of strangers cut off and adrift in space. Boffard does a great job of making all of the characters and their backstories truly vivid, and he ratchets up the tension from scene to scene.
My husband kept commenting on my facial expressions while I was reading Adrift. Apparently the shock and excitement was all over my face. It took me a while to get into this one, but once I did, it was an emotional rollercoaster. A little unbelievable at times, but I couldn't put it down.
The Red Panda is adrift (see what I did there?). While on a tour of the Horsehead nebula, its home base and all other ships have been destroyed by an unknown vessel. But how will an aging tour boat of a spacecraft and its 10 passengers make it out alive, and who attacked their defunct space station? The answers are surprisingly straight forward.
Adrift is a bottle episode of a novel, but it’s not a bad one. The vast majority of it is confined to the Red Panda, an innocuous tour ship with an innocuous name. The passengers, however, all seem to have secrets and not everyone gets to make it home. The novel jumps around, following almost every passenger’s perspective per chapter. Sometimes we’re treated to memories or flashbacks that flesh out the characters, which is essential for this “god mode” perspective and helps build out the drama. Sometimes things happen in the real world that call back to previously revealed memories and, while it’s spelled out all too often in case you weren’t paying attention, it’s effective at showing before telling.
But at some point the broad questions get boiled down to a couple possibilities. Once a major reveal is given on the question of who attacked the space station and why, the rest of the novel outside the confines of the Red Panda kind of writes itself. The things you think are going on are going on with little deviation. We’re still left to see how the passengers will or won’t make it out alive, but the broader plot becomes a little too predictable. It’s not that I expected mind blowing reveal after mind blowing reveal, but the first one is exciting enough that I was hoping for more out of the rest.
Adrift then becomes a tale of two tales: the survival of the passengers inside the Red Panda, and the broader conflict in the world they exist, with the first being the more interesting of the two. It’s a solid survival tale that throws two handfuls of characters into a tough situation and watches to see where the bodies lay at the end. The external plot isn’t bad either, just a little too predictable.
Adrift is a bottle episode of a novel, but it’s not a bad one. The vast majority of it is confined to the Red Panda, an innocuous tour ship with an innocuous name. The passengers, however, all seem to have secrets and not everyone gets to make it home. The novel jumps around, following almost every passenger’s perspective per chapter. Sometimes we’re treated to memories or flashbacks that flesh out the characters, which is essential for this “god mode” perspective and helps build out the drama. Sometimes things happen in the real world that call back to previously revealed memories and, while it’s spelled out all too often in case you weren’t paying attention, it’s effective at showing before telling.
But at some point the broad questions get boiled down to a couple possibilities. Once a major reveal is given on the question of who attacked the space station and why, the rest of the novel outside the confines of the Red Panda kind of writes itself. The things you think are going on are going on with little deviation. We’re still left to see how the passengers will or won’t make it out alive, but the broader plot becomes a little too predictable. It’s not that I expected mind blowing reveal after mind blowing reveal, but the first one is exciting enough that I was hoping for more out of the rest.
Adrift then becomes a tale of two tales: the survival of the passengers inside the Red Panda, and the broader conflict in the world they exist, with the first being the more interesting of the two. It’s a solid survival tale that throws two handfuls of characters into a tough situation and watches to see where the bodies lay at the end. The external plot isn’t bad either, just a little too predictable.
this book was amazing and signals my return to reading sci-fi which I had given up on after previous books left. me disenchanted with the genre. You can find my full review for this book on the nerd daily www.thenerddaily.com
-Jayse
-Jayse
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Eh, it was fine. Adventure fun with cardboard characters in space.