Reviews

The Solar War by A.G. Riddle

Only show reviews with written explanations

soumow's review

adventurous informative inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

DNF 37%

The treatment of the female main character Emma got worse. Her being pregnant is somehow way more important than anything else - her life, their daughter's life, MMC's family, friends, humanity as a species, etc. But no, the fetus is the most important thing for sure. 🙄

Mary Sue male main character is also worse in his whole savior of humanity BS but also keeping stuff from Emma. The whole dystopian/post-apocalyptic thing is exaggerated to the point of like, possible actual human extinction. Not really my thing. I stopped reading a few days ago and I find myself wanting to read literally anything else.

Content Warnings

rick_k's review against another edition

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3.0

I still enjoyed The Solar War but the challenges are more mundane than the first in the series. Most of the hard work is done by a billions-of-years-old AI, and having a climax where our genius has to out genius the genius AI was always going to be hard to pull off. All the characters got a bit less complex and less interesting, which is a shame. That said, the overall trajectory is interesting and has brought some new challenges to our heroes at the end of book two. I would probably seek out the third book if I didn't already own it.

A quick aside - you could build a Dyson sphere around our sun and leave a minute fraction of the enclosure open to allow sun to land on the Earth and revolve the sphere in sympathy to Earth's orbit. Probably at less energy cost than war with Earth. I think that would allow the Grid to harvest almost the same about of energy while allowing intelligent life the opportunity to mature and eventually enrich their culture in time.

nakora's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional 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

5.0

samsch2024's review

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

dr14's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative mysterious slow-paced

Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

nicktrochalakis's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

ericaburns1's review

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

Stopped in the middle for months because it was slow and I didn’t really care about what was happening. Loved the idea but this book focused to much on the boring aspects of the plot. I want more Grid and Arthur. I’m so tired of James being a perfect superhero who is always the smartest, the only one to figure anything out, and always being the only one with the perfect plan. Emma was brilliant and saved the day in book 1 and now she’s relegated to kitchen, childcare, and therapy duties while James tells her NOTHING despite her specialized training. She could so easily have been used to help every situation and James would be like oh no she can’t know it would stress her out too much Like?? She’s one of your fellow big brains and she survived the ISS disaster I think she can handle it. Got through it just to get to the next book because it sounded more interesting. I’m like an hour into it and it is sticking to the interesting plot points thankfully.