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horrorqueen 's review for:
See You in the Cosmos
by Jack Cheng
This read like an own-brand imitation of Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime[book:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time|1618]. It centres around a young boy, Alex, who essentially sets out on a quest to get to a space convention (although this is quickly dispensed with to be replaced by his new quest to find his father. Sound familiar?) The problems arise, however, with the amount of belief a reader has to suspend in order to get behind him. Whereas in [i]Curious Incident[/i], the lengths Christopher goes to to fulfil his quest are believable, even courageous, the things we are asked to believe that Alex does (such as travel across half of the country, alone, and then with several adult 'good guy' strangers) just stretch the limits of credibility in my opinion.
The action moves along at a decent enough pace, but becomes confused at times, with sub-plots never really grabbing the attention fully, leaving a sense of impatience and wanting to get on with the 'real' plot. Alex's narrative device is a golden iPod onto which he records virtually everything that is happening, which leads to some fairly awkward sections of dialogue to plow through. The use of an external recording method has striking similarities with how Christopher tells his story in [book:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time|1618].
Ultimately, it wasn't a terrible book. But I think if the author had been a little more inventive and presented a story which was even a little more believable, he could have done a much better job.
The action moves along at a decent enough pace, but becomes confused at times, with sub-plots never really grabbing the attention fully, leaving a sense of impatience and wanting to get on with the 'real' plot. Alex's narrative device is a golden iPod onto which he records virtually everything that is happening, which leads to some fairly awkward sections of dialogue to plow through. The use of an external recording method has striking similarities with how Christopher tells his story in [book:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time|1618].
Ultimately, it wasn't a terrible book. But I think if the author had been a little more inventive and presented a story which was even a little more believable, he could have done a much better job.