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A review by jbenz1213
Gravity by Tess Gerritsen
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
The best pithy take I can come up with to describe Gravity is that I felt like I was reading a Wikipedia plot summary. But like, a really riveting plot summary!
The narrative hook is a classic trope that has been reused over generations from Alien to Snakes on a Plane: Our hero, doctor Emma Watson (no relation), is stuck on the International Space Station and a mysterious organism is killing her crew one by one.
This setup is such a cliché because it works. What makes the mysterious creature tick? How can our hero escape their claustrophobic setting? Unfortunately, as I tore through the page-count of Gravity I realized that I was reading to learn the answers to these questions and not because I cared about any of Gerritsen’s ankle-deep characters.
Clearly the emotional hook here is supposed to be Emma’s husband Jack, who is grounded while Emma is fighting for her life up in the ISS. Emma and Jack are inexplicably going through a divorce when she leaves the planet, despite the fact that both characters’ internal monologues express their undying love for each other. We never see their chemistry together, and we never see the lows of their relationship either. Their relationship is transparently an emotionally manipulative device to try and get the reader to care about what happens to Emma, and to give Jack an opportunity to save his wife in the final pages.
Other characters aren’t much better. They are little more than hyper-competent, well-intentioned plot delivery devices, spouting NASA acronyms and having one (1) beer at the obligatory astronaut bar after training missions. I didn’t feel the need to remember the names associated with each character because, honestly, they were interchangeable and they did not matter to the plot. Three different men—I kid you not—are solely motivated by their dead/dying wife in Gravity. That’s the level of emotional complexity you can expect from these characters.
All of this adds up to the outcome that Gravity is very boring until bodies start hitting the proverbial floor. Thankfully, once events started heating up I was motivated to read in a “How does she tie this up?” kind of way.
Not that there are any particularly unexpected twists in plot here—every plot point is HEAVILY foreshadowed, and by the final chapters it is clear that Gerritsen is not trying to be subversive or interesting here. Spoiler alert: the good guys win. If there is any overarching thematic point she’s trying to make, it’s “rah rah, NASA good,” a sentiment that is typical of Gravity’s ‘90s contemporaries, but has not aged particularly well.
This all probably sounds super harsh, but all things considered this is a perfectly fine smooth-brain sci-fi read if you’re into that sort of thing.
The narrative hook is a classic trope that has been reused over generations from Alien to Snakes on a Plane: Our hero, doctor Emma Watson (no relation), is stuck on the International Space Station and a mysterious organism is killing her crew one by one.
This setup is such a cliché because it works. What makes the mysterious creature tick? How can our hero escape their claustrophobic setting? Unfortunately, as I tore through the page-count of Gravity I realized that I was reading to learn the answers to these questions and not because I cared about any of Gerritsen’s ankle-deep characters.
Clearly the emotional hook here is supposed to be Emma’s husband Jack, who is grounded while Emma is fighting for her life up in the ISS. Emma and Jack are inexplicably going through a divorce when she leaves the planet, despite the fact that both characters’ internal monologues express their undying love for each other. We never see their chemistry together, and we never see the lows of their relationship either. Their relationship is transparently an emotionally manipulative device to try and get the reader to care about what happens to Emma, and to give Jack an opportunity to save his wife in the final pages.
Other characters aren’t much better. They are little more than hyper-competent, well-intentioned plot delivery devices, spouting NASA acronyms and having one (1) beer at the obligatory astronaut bar after training missions. I didn’t feel the need to remember the names associated with each character because, honestly, they were interchangeable and they did not matter to the plot. Three different men—I kid you not—are solely motivated by their dead/dying wife in Gravity. That’s the level of emotional complexity you can expect from these characters.
All of this adds up to the outcome that Gravity is very boring until bodies start hitting the proverbial floor. Thankfully, once events started heating up I was motivated to read in a “How does she tie this up?” kind of way.
Not that there are any particularly unexpected twists in plot here—every plot point is HEAVILY foreshadowed, and by the final chapters it is clear that Gerritsen is not trying to be subversive or interesting here. Spoiler alert: the good guys win. If there is any overarching thematic point she’s trying to make, it’s “rah rah, NASA good,” a sentiment that is typical of Gravity’s ‘90s contemporaries, but has not aged particularly well.
This all probably sounds super harsh, but all things considered this is a perfectly fine smooth-brain sci-fi read if you’re into that sort of thing.