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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I think the ideas in this book are enough to make a couple of good short stories. However, the realization just wasn't good. It was repetitive (especially if you have read the previous books) and there was a plot for about a quarter of the book. After that, it felt like there wasn't much apart from really heavy handed excessive exposition.
Let me summarize most of the book: a character explains something to another character (at times even "Let me tell you why you and me, together, decided to come here a year ago"). And what is worse was that a lot of what is being explained is boring. Like listing all the names of all the moons of Saturn. It's clear that Baxter loves reading details about the solar system, because in this book he has reproduced a lot of the contents of Wikipedia on the subject.
Here's an actual quote [A character] "remembered the ancient beautiful names. Pan, Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Epimetheus..." On the very same page: "Once, three ice moons had circled outside the orbit of Titan: Iapetus, Hyperion, and retrograde Phoebe." This does not matter one bit for the story, it is just casually mentioned, like the vast majority of things explained by the characters.
I'm disappointed that I did not end up enjoying this as much as I could have given the couple of nice ideas the story was built around. I still haven't read Vacuum Diagrams; it seems that I may enjoy a series of (linked) Baxter short stories more, because Baxter's style of novels doesn't work for me.
Let me summarize most of the book: a character explains something to another character (at times even "Let me tell you why you and me, together, decided to come here a year ago"). And what is worse was that a lot of what is being explained is boring. Like listing all the names of all the moons of Saturn. It's clear that Baxter loves reading details about the solar system, because in this book he has reproduced a lot of the contents of Wikipedia on the subject.
Here's an actual quote [A character] "remembered the ancient beautiful names. Pan, Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Epimetheus..." On the very same page: "Once, three ice moons had circled outside the orbit of Titan: Iapetus, Hyperion, and retrograde Phoebe." This does not matter one bit for the story, it is just casually mentioned, like the vast majority of things explained by the characters.
I'm disappointed that I did not end up enjoying this as much as I could have given the couple of nice ideas the story was built around. I still haven't read Vacuum Diagrams; it seems that I may enjoy a series of (linked) Baxter short stories more, because Baxter's style of novels doesn't work for me.
adventurous
challenging
sad
slow-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
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Just great, huge concepts of time and space, amount of mind boggling hard science just pushed it down to four stars, but I am probably being a bit harsh as that is one of Stephen Baxter's USP's.
adventurous
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I feel like this book managed to do a far better job with characters than the three previous ones. I was actually moved by some of the scenes. While, no, I don't really 'get' the science, the story was written well enough for me to get the gist of it. I also like how it tied into at least two of the previous three books. I'm not really sure that it ties into Flux, though.
challenging
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes