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A review by frakalot
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
dark
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
An alien object has been discovered on the moon and it's acting like a death maze. Each time the artefact is approached the person can get a little further than the previous attempt before being killed. The head researcher, Hawks, teams up with the human resources guy to hire a psychopath, Barker. The plan is to clone Barker by some method that leaves him telepathically connected to his clones and to send the clones into the artefact one after another.
None of the characters are sympathetic to readers; Hawks is happy to repeatedly kill his subjects, the HR guy keeps a list of psychopaths on call for odd jobs, Barker is, well, a fkn psycho and his girlfriend is just trying to bang everyone.
A lot of the narrative has little to do with the actual psychological experiments and I found most of the story was rather boring as a result. It's an excellent premise but the story focused on adding background for Barker and Hawks more than on exploring the current dynamic of their interaction.
First published in 1960 this book calls ahead to the free loving hippy movement with Barker giving us his views on why he lets his girlfriend run around and a fair chunk of word real estate being taken up by the girlfriend flirting with Hawks.
There was also a passionate paragraph or three about why women are as intelligent as men which was probably necessary for the books contemporary audience.
Overall I thought this was a great idea but a boring book.
None of the characters are sympathetic to readers; Hawks is happy to repeatedly kill his subjects, the HR guy keeps a list of psychopaths on call for odd jobs, Barker is, well, a fkn psycho and his girlfriend is just trying to bang everyone.
A lot of the narrative has little to do with the actual psychological experiments and I found most of the story was rather boring as a result. It's an excellent premise but the story focused on adding background for Barker and Hawks more than on exploring the current dynamic of their interaction.
First published in 1960 this book calls ahead to the free loving hippy movement with Barker giving us his views on why he lets his girlfriend run around and a fair chunk of word real estate being taken up by the girlfriend flirting with Hawks.
There was also a passionate paragraph or three about why women are as intelligent as men which was probably necessary for the books contemporary audience.
Overall I thought this was a great idea but a boring book.