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A review by brooke_review
Half Way Home by Hugh Howey
2.0
I chose to read the re-release of Half Way Home solely based on the fact that it is written by Hugh Howey, author of the Wool series, which I loved. Science fiction is generally not my genre with the except of dystopia-type books, so Half Way Home is one of the first of its kind for me as a reader. Unfortunately, this story was not what I expected, although I tried to keep an open mind. Although I am not a typical reader of the genre, I feel like I could fall in love with the right science fiction story, but Half Way Home was unfortunately not it.
I felt lost for much of this tale about teenagers born into a space colony that was deemed unsuitable for life, and tasked with not only trying to survive the elements but also survive each other. Surprisingly, there was a significant lack of world-building in this novel, which is something that Howey excelled at with Wool. Relying more on telling than showing, Howey packs Half Way Home with action, not giving readers enough time to absorb, much less understand, this foreign world he is trying to create.
This book also suffers from too large of a cast, with characters being introduced without any significant defining characteristics, making them just another person readers have to struggle to remember, much less care about. The interactions between characters are shallow, and readers never really get to know them, which is disappointing in a book about survival. When characters are killed off and you feel nothing, it is often because the writer did not do enough to make you care.
Read Half Way Home if science fiction is a genre you enjoy and action-packed novels that focus more on the plot instead of the characters is your cup of tea.
I felt lost for much of this tale about teenagers born into a space colony that was deemed unsuitable for life, and tasked with not only trying to survive the elements but also survive each other. Surprisingly, there was a significant lack of world-building in this novel, which is something that Howey excelled at with Wool. Relying more on telling than showing, Howey packs Half Way Home with action, not giving readers enough time to absorb, much less understand, this foreign world he is trying to create.
This book also suffers from too large of a cast, with characters being introduced without any significant defining characteristics, making them just another person readers have to struggle to remember, much less care about. The interactions between characters are shallow, and readers never really get to know them, which is disappointing in a book about survival. When characters are killed off and you feel nothing, it is often because the writer did not do enough to make you care.
Read Half Way Home if science fiction is a genre you enjoy and action-packed novels that focus more on the plot instead of the characters is your cup of tea.