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A review by chantaal
Generation Ship by Michael Mammay
3.0
Generation Ship got its hooks into me and dragged me along for a wild ride, read in two sittings. Or is it layings, when you're in bed reading on your Kindle, desperately ignoring how tired you are as you thumb just one more page...
It's a pretty solid premise: a generation ship, hundreds of years after it left Earth, is finally reaching its destination: a planet they can possibly colonize. As the ship approaches, political unrest churns and erupts thanks to the actions of our five main characters. We follow a scientist, a hacker, a police officer, a governor, and a reluctant union leader. Everyone is a mess, acting and reacting and reacting again, decisions pinging off each other until the ship is ready for an entire class revolution. It's great, that way.
Where the book failed for me was in the fact that I did not for one moment believe any of our main characters were <i>real people.</i> They all felt like puppets being moved around by the author to make his story move forward. Like I could see every decision the author was making so it could lead to the next, so it could lead to another, so that this outcome could happen. The constant forward momentum was great and obviously kept me reading, but I felt so dissatisfied with the whole journey by the end, mainly because of the characters.
It also did not need to be nearly 600 pages long.
Issues aside, this was still an incredibly compelling read. It's pure political drama set in space, like John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Stacy Abrams, and Lois McMaster Bujold were all set in a blender and this was the result.
Would I recommend it? Maybe, if you're looking for something easy to read and need to scratch a political drama, space opera itch.
It's a pretty solid premise: a generation ship, hundreds of years after it left Earth, is finally reaching its destination: a planet they can possibly colonize. As the ship approaches, political unrest churns and erupts thanks to the actions of our five main characters. We follow a scientist, a hacker, a police officer, a governor, and a reluctant union leader. Everyone is a mess, acting and reacting and reacting again, decisions pinging off each other until the ship is ready for an entire class revolution. It's great, that way.
Where the book failed for me was in the fact that I did not for one moment believe any of our main characters were <i>real people.</i> They all felt like puppets being moved around by the author to make his story move forward. Like I could see every decision the author was making so it could lead to the next, so it could lead to another, so that this outcome could happen. The constant forward momentum was great and obviously kept me reading, but I felt so dissatisfied with the whole journey by the end, mainly because of the characters.
It also did not need to be nearly 600 pages long.
Issues aside, this was still an incredibly compelling read. It's pure political drama set in space, like John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Stacy Abrams, and Lois McMaster Bujold were all set in a blender and this was the result.
Would I recommend it? Maybe, if you're looking for something easy to read and need to scratch a political drama, space opera itch.