Beacon 23

3 stars - Metaphorosis Reviews

A reluctant war hero sought out a posting running a remote asteroid beacon, but it turns out not to be quite as lonely as he'd hoped.

Hugh Howey got his start writing episodic novels, and Beacon 23 clearly shows that heritage. That's not necessarily an issue; I very much like Roger Zelazny's Dilvish, the Damned, for example. Howey doesn't pull the trick off quite so well. There's a certain amount of repetition at the start of each section, and it's not handled as smoothly as I'd have liked.

To some extent, that's true of the overall story as well. Howey's prose lacks the subtlety that would have made this a really good novel. We're not allowed to forget for a moment that the protagonist was a soldier - with frequent and somewhat clumsy slang, and military terms. Similarly, the beacon acts as a lighthouse for passing ships - a metaphor that's hammered into us over and over. There are several infodumps that get in the way of the story, and there are some aspects where the story's logic simply doesn't work. Over all, it feels like Howey is trying too hard, not trusting his readers enough. I found Wool to be much more effective.

All that said, this isn't a bad story. The protagonist is engaging, and the action is generally interesting. It's not a story you'll likely remember long, but it's a pleasant short read.

I don't write a lot of reviews, but I feel the need to write something to justify giving a book 1 star. This book is bad. It is not very well written at all, I got the feeling I was reading something a high school kid wrote. It tries to be funny at times, the quote “I wonder if rocks can fart” is an actual line from the book, seriously. I like fart jokes as much as anyone, but this is just dumb, and there is not really any context other than a rock being involved. Just a bad attempt at a joke. Right from the first page, the line “Darkness you can chew”, I get what he is trying to do, but it just seems like a poor way to convey the oppressive darkness of space. Honestly, I loved the idea of a lighthouse in space, but the way the story was delivered just didn't do it for me. The pacing seems way off, for a book about isolation, there are so many things going on with very little space in between. I understand that this was released as 5 serialized stories, and I will admit, it probably succeeds a little more in that format, but it fails miserably as a collected novel. I almost feel bad giving such a low score, I am usually not very critical, but this book deserves one star, it is just that bad. I did read the whole thing, but if it was any longer I would have bailed out. All that being said, it has seemed to get good reviews, so maybe it's just me, but I didn't enjoy it and would not recommend it to anyone.

Working my way through the entire [a:Hugh Howey 3064305 Hugh Howey https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1327581631p2/3064305.jpg] catalog.