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infinispace's review against another edition
2.0
The SFWA really missed the boat giving this one the Nebula award over Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Rite of Passage is just a dull, dull, dull science fiction book with uninteresting characters and an equally uninteresting plot. Who knew that in the future where people lived in a ship capable of FTL travel and traversing the galaxy that they still kept horses on board to ride around when they landed on planets. Horses!!
I would have rather the author had focused on why they were on the ship and why/how Earth was destroyed, not about a girl crawling through ventilation ducts, or playing soccer, or calling her father 'Daddy' every other sentence. And the entire 'rite of passage' where the kids are dropped off on a planet to survive for 30 days only took place in the last 40 pages of the book.
There's really no science in the book. There's very little world building. Conceptualization is near nil.
Ugh, just a dreadful science fiction. This plot could have just as easily taken place in a contemporary setting with no impact to what little story there is. And to top it off the cover art of the used version I was able to dig up is just awful.
I would have rather the author had focused on why they were on the ship and why/how Earth was destroyed, not about a girl crawling through ventilation ducts, or playing soccer, or calling her father 'Daddy' every other sentence. And the entire 'rite of passage' where the kids are dropped off on a planet to survive for 30 days only took place in the last 40 pages of the book.
There's really no science in the book. There's very little world building. Conceptualization is near nil.
Ugh, just a dreadful science fiction. This plot could have just as easily taken place in a contemporary setting with no impact to what little story there is. And to top it off the cover art of the used version I was able to dig up is just awful.
eventual_ghost's review against another edition
2.0
This book was a bit of a slog and not what I was expecting. A lot of it was building up an atmosphere that went nowhere, and did not seem to be consistent. At times there was diatribes that seemed more paternalistic than anything. By the end it was clear that the book overall was just a means to get the authors opinions on certain ethical questions out in the world, which I guess can be argued is the point of speculative fiction. Glad to have the paperback though because it does have a sick cover. Also - in the future why do no women sit on the counsel? Very clear it was written by a man.
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