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jaybatson's review
2.0
So here's the quandary with this book. I'd like to give it a high rating, but I just can't.
The good:
- The SciFi ideas are interesting.
- The SciFi technologies / concepts are "explained" more than a typical SciFi book, but the explanations don't go so far as to fall down because flaws are revealed in the explanation. This was the author's intent (as stated in the intro), and generally she succeeded.
- The story is interesting enough that I'm now onto the 2nd book in the series, and I'll probably read the last (because it's hard for me to start something & not see it thru to the end, no matter how much I dislike it).
The bad:
- I don't know how to say it, but the writing is simply sub-par. There's a bunch of problems, ranging from the way the writer describes how a character thinks / talks-to-self, to too-telegraphic chapter titles, to somewhat lame-sounding fill-ins of what happened in an interim time to some non-main-character, etc.
- The editing is atrocious. Please pay the $1,000 it takes to hire a professional editor. This goes for both types of editing: writing feedback / control (e.g. "this doesn't work too well; try X") to copy editing (missing / extraneous punctuation, etc.)
- And one minor nit: It occasionally seems like a cross between a SciFi book and a chic book; there's this little romance between a couple of the main characters, and the way the writer develops this puts summer beach-read text into the middle of a SciFi drama. It's just too disconcerting for me.
So honestly, Two Stars for the book. The writer is promising; but hire a real, professional, good editor - it'll do wonders for the resulting product.
The good:
- The SciFi ideas are interesting.
- The SciFi technologies / concepts are "explained" more than a typical SciFi book, but the explanations don't go so far as to fall down because flaws are revealed in the explanation. This was the author's intent (as stated in the intro), and generally she succeeded.
- The story is interesting enough that I'm now onto the 2nd book in the series, and I'll probably read the last (because it's hard for me to start something & not see it thru to the end, no matter how much I dislike it).
The bad:
- I don't know how to say it, but the writing is simply sub-par. There's a bunch of problems, ranging from the way the writer describes how a character thinks / talks-to-self, to too-telegraphic chapter titles, to somewhat lame-sounding fill-ins of what happened in an interim time to some non-main-character, etc.
- The editing is atrocious. Please pay the $1,000 it takes to hire a professional editor. This goes for both types of editing: writing feedback / control (e.g. "this doesn't work too well; try X") to copy editing (missing / extraneous punctuation, etc.)
- And one minor nit: It occasionally seems like a cross between a SciFi book and a chic book; there's this little romance between a couple of the main characters, and the way the writer develops this puts summer beach-read text into the middle of a SciFi drama. It's just too disconcerting for me.
So honestly, Two Stars for the book. The writer is promising; but hire a real, professional, good editor - it'll do wonders for the resulting product.
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