Dan
If I had not bought that at full price I would have DNFed it.
This is neither character driven nor plot driven, this is world building driven.
If you are fine with that, you get a beautifully drawn alien world with lots of unique things but the plot is thin at best. While the description of the earth and how we got here is lacking, the alien world is fantastic.
Baxter's ideas are, as always, grandios, interesting and though provoking but the execution is so poor in this one.
The story only really starts at around 45%, the first half of the book is basically pointless filler with story lines that go nowhere and are never picked up again. Maybe those are for book 2, idk, I am not gonna read it.
It gets interesting in the second part of the book but that too is drawn out only to end at a cliffhanger, which was infuriating to say the least.
It put me off so much that this will be the last Baxter book I will read for some time.
Oh and the book has nothing to do with the text on its back. Literally nothing.
Disclaimer: I ‘read' this on audible, if that is of importance.
3,5/5 stars
This is a nice little mysterious adventure story that could be a great episode of Star Trek, The Orville or Stargate. Probably not something you gonna reread, since its strength is the mystery and trying to piece together wtf is going on. If you are going to read this, do yourself a favour and don't read anything about it, take and afternoon or two and enjoy a mystery.
Well that kinda sucked. 1.5/2 Stars.
The first half of the book is a snooze fest one can only endure with skimming and skipping. We are in book 2, we should be done with the setup by now.
Halfway through the book it get's to a solid 3.5/5 stars and sharply drops off near the end.
There are too many characters, too many storylines, too many ppl who want to talk to each other, too many ppl the author wants to give some room to breathe.
The book is constantly switching context, jumping around form one place to another to another to another and back, often every 2 or 3 pages, which never let me really get into the book, minus a few very cool scenes/dialogues.
There is hardly any new development, just the one thing that happens near the end, the rest is just characters eating each other for the first time.
I don't think the author pulled it off, I hope David Mack brings it home with book 3.
Reynolds can't write endings for the life of him.
Book 2 and 3 are really really bad.
That was great. A somewhat short, popcorn-movie like, fast paced sci-fi story.
Second book I read from A.G. Riddle and a second banger.
3.5/5 stars.
Well that took a turn for the weird. Luckily way more sci-fi and epic than book 2.
Better than the second, worse than the first book.
This is basically 3 novellas combined in a book with an overarching plot. Did I see the ending coming from light years away? yep. Was I entertained anyways? Yeah-ish.
I like his writing, it's fun, witty, easy to understand, but do I wanna experience it 13 books long? probably not. It's not as clever as it wants to be.
This is another one of those ‘scifi in name only books'. 95% of the story could have taken place anywhere but since it's a talky book and I like talky books I continued on. Now, with talky books, you need intelligent characters having intelligent dialogue so that when you read a conversation you get goosebumps. Did the author manage to do that here? no, not by a long shot. The Author tries to put layer upon layer of subtext, double and triple meaning in every little gesture in every dialogue that ultimately everything turns out to be almost meaningless. Luckily she recognised this and had the MC's sidekick or the MC's inner monologue explain the actual meaning of every line, making it unnecessarily long and pointless.
This book is a masterclass in ignoring ‘show, don't tell'. We get told about aliens, yet never meet any. We get told about spaceships, yet never see any, we get told about jump gates, yet never use any let alone learn how they work, probably magic, I don't know. There is very little ‘sci' here.
80% of the book is buildup to the last 20% which are somewhat promising for the second book. But having a whole book as setup for a second book, which other authors put on the blurb, is a bit much, for my taste.
All in all it kinda feels like a more highbrow, less interesting, less fun version of ‘The Collapsing Empire' by Scalzi with all the scifi elements taken out.
This is less of a novel and more of a loosely connected short story collection, which is infuriating.
The overarching story arcs are fantastic and interesting but get interrupted by the short stories which shed light on the lives of the main characters, much like the first Hyperion book.
If that is your jam, great, if not this is going to be a disappointment.
The Ending is just great though. Bought book #2 already.
3.5/5
I might just not like classic sci-fi.
Most of the book it was 2.5 -3 stars but the ending was amazing.
2.5/5 stars - it's ok
Underwhelming describes this book best, imho.
It starts out strong. very engaging, then gets boring and fizzles out at the end.
Twice as long as it needs to be.
The writing is top notch though, really love his writing style.
Finished the book in one evening, could not put it down. It has everything i want in a scifi book: Aliens, wormholes, timetravel, black holes, lasers, exploration and grand ideas.
Good one.
I liked that, a quick, entertaining palate cleanser type of book between 2 heavier books.
Definitely going to check out book 2.
It is basically the pilot episode of the TV Show “Lost”. Very unsatisfying but promising and interesting. Unfortunately this is not a pilot but a whole book.
After finishing it I have more questions than answers, it seems the author set it up that way so you will buy book 2. With just 200 pages that feels just wrong. If you subtract the dreadfully boring ramblings of the protagonist's past and marriage it is little more than a prologue of a real book. If it had a proper ending or at least some resemblance of an ending or would even answer one question I would maybe give it three stars.
That was nice, best of the 3.Fizzled out at the end a bit but I was very well entertained for the most part
Painting religion as something good is really some speculative fiction.
That's as close to DNF as they come