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lesliefh 's review for:
Poseidon's Wake
by Alastair Reynolds
I really liked the first two books in the Poseidon's Children cycle. And I really liked this one for the first 80%. Unfortunately, an extremely important plot point hinges on complete misunderstanding of space travel and space travel physics - there's a ship with a magical drive that is somehow unable to avoid hitting a planet because it can only do sustained 1g acceleration instead of sustained 3g acceleration.
Missing a planet with a magical constant thrust drive is extremely easy. It's like basing an important plot point in a book on the fact that someone sees a train coming to crush him and tries to outrun it along the tracks but fails, instead of just getting off the tracks.
It's an SF magnum opus with interstellar travel, artificial intelligences, nanotech and talking elephants, and nothing there broke my suspension of disbelief. But being unable to avoid hitting a planet with a supercharged fusion drive and hours to spare? This jarred me rather unpleasantly.
Missing a planet with a magical constant thrust drive is extremely easy. It's like basing an important plot point in a book on the fact that someone sees a train coming to crush him and tries to outrun it along the tracks but fails, instead of just getting off the tracks.
It's an SF magnum opus with interstellar travel, artificial intelligences, nanotech and talking elephants, and nothing there broke my suspension of disbelief. But being unable to avoid hitting a planet with a supercharged fusion drive and hours to spare? This jarred me rather unpleasantly.