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morganziegler 's review for:
Ship of Fools
by Richard Paul Russo
Huh...I feel a lot of ways about all of that. 2.5 stars, but I'm gonna round up because, despite the fact that I'm gonna complain about it, I think I liked it still?
The Good:
- Premise - Aliens vibes abound as our resident dumbasses plunge into a presumed dead floating ship in deep space, die a lot, and yet continue to think things are totally chill. Leads to a lot of messed up crap.
- Atmosphere - Excellent spooks and creeps. Sci-fi horror is so refreshing to read.
- Uhh, the coffee swilling dwarf was cool?
- Middle of the book was really solid. The beginning was a little slow and meandering and the ending was poo for me, but the middle ramped up and set a lot of good potential up, which it then wasted.
The Bad:
- Characters - What? Like, I appreciate the disability rep up in here, but a lot of these characters felt more like floating brains to me than people. A lot of ideas and attempts at interactions, but there was only one relationship in the whole book where I felt like people talked to each other the way people even sort of do in real life between Par and Bartolomeo.
- The ending - Anticlimactic and failing to deliver on what I felt were some promises laid out in the intro, plus an ambiguous cop-out sort of ending that doesn't let you know anything about what happened.
- Handwaving away things that ought to have been large issues to overcome in order to move things along. Things happened that wouldn't seem to follow what had happened up to that point, but also wouldn't be talked about enough.
- Ham-fisted religious discussions and imagery just overflowing up in here. And I'm a Lord of the Rings fan. People having religious and philosophical discussions during emergencies like they're in philosophy and theology seminars at university instead of in a crisis.
The Ugly:
- CW disturbing imagery of dead bodies, and that's really about it other than if you have some space-related anxiety in general.
This is a really mixed bag, because I enjoyed the middle of this book a lot, and it was very atmospheric and the author does an excellent job with descriptions so you really get all the details and can build a good image of what's going on. But then I feel like the ending didn't give me a solid pay off and the themes were heavy-handed. I can see why people like it, especially if they're more willing to suspend their disbelief or they're not as character-driven readers as I am.
I recommend this for fans of sci-fi\horror who aren't too fussed about character development or realistic characters and who just want a good old-fashioned scary alien story and who don't mind a bit of a let down at the end.
The Good:
- Premise - Aliens vibes abound as our resident dumbasses plunge into a presumed dead floating ship in deep space, die a lot, and yet continue to think things are totally chill. Leads to a lot of messed up crap.
- Atmosphere - Excellent spooks and creeps. Sci-fi horror is so refreshing to read.
- Uhh, the coffee swilling dwarf was cool?
- Middle of the book was really solid. The beginning was a little slow and meandering and the ending was poo for me, but the middle ramped up and set a lot of good potential up, which it then wasted.
The Bad:
- Characters - What? Like, I appreciate the disability rep up in here, but a lot of these characters felt more like floating brains to me than people. A lot of ideas and attempts at interactions, but there was only one relationship in the whole book where I felt like people talked to each other the way people even sort of do in real life between Par and Bartolomeo.
- The ending - Anticlimactic and failing to deliver on what I felt were some promises laid out in the intro, plus an ambiguous cop-out sort of ending that doesn't let you know anything about what happened.
- Handwaving away things that ought to have been large issues to overcome in order to move things along. Things happened that wouldn't seem to follow what had happened up to that point, but also wouldn't be talked about enough.
- Ham-fisted religious discussions and imagery just overflowing up in here. And I'm a Lord of the Rings fan. People having religious and philosophical discussions during emergencies like they're in philosophy and theology seminars at university instead of in a crisis.
The Ugly:
- CW disturbing imagery of dead bodies, and that's really about it other than if you have some space-related anxiety in general.
This is a really mixed bag, because I enjoyed the middle of this book a lot, and it was very atmospheric and the author does an excellent job with descriptions so you really get all the details and can build a good image of what's going on. But then I feel like the ending didn't give me a solid pay off and the themes were heavy-handed. I can see why people like it, especially if they're more willing to suspend their disbelief or they're not as character-driven readers as I am.
I recommend this for fans of sci-fi\horror who aren't too fussed about character development or realistic characters and who just want a good old-fashioned scary alien story and who don't mind a bit of a let down at the end.