Ship of Fools

TL;DR

I didn't enjoy this book. Slow start, it started to get good and interesting towards the end but then it's ending is horrendous. Garbage main character, story with zero answers by the end and atrocious ending.

If you want a similar premise of a group of people boarding a mysterious ship to find out what's going on that are actually a good read The Last Astronaut or Dead Silence.

My Scoring System

I have five things I look for in a book, if the book checks all five it's a 5/5 stars book, if it checks none it's a 1/5 stars and everything else is a combination:

X - Main Story: Sounds interesting and it gets you hooked but if you knew from the beginning that none of your questions will be answered it would be a different experience.

X - Side Stories (if it applies): I don't remember if there were any side stories, I don't think so but even if they were if I can't remember them it means they weren't good to begin with.

X - Characters: Horrible main protagonist, there are a few minor characters that were enjoyable but the mayority are terrible.

✓ - Setting/Ambiance: The main ship is interesting I liked the different parts of it and the mysterious ship they board is also interesting. The ambience was good.

X - Ending: Atrocious ending, zero questions answered and that decision by own main protagonist...wow.

Extensive Review

Our main character is a piece of shit, without spoiling stuff he's pretty much the reason why everything bad happens and at the end he's like "sorry, peace out homies!". I couldn't believe when he made that decision at the end, what a garbage human being with zero honor and principles.

There are a few good characters that I liked but it doesn't matter in the end, again I don't want to spoil stuff but trust me, they didn't deserve what got handed to them.

For a brief few pages the story got really interesting and I was getting excited because we were maybe starting to get some answers. But no, nothing gets answered. From the moment you learn there is a mysterious alien ship found to the end of the book you learn NOTHING at all. Origin, what is is, why it's there, is it alone?... you get nothing at all. So if you plan on reading this book I want you to know what you're getting yourself into:

- Very slow start with weird things shown to us that never gets talked about again...

- A dozen of characters given their full name and a few lines of what our main character thinks about them that we don't care at all because they just vote on stuff when there's a meeting. They literally don't do anything else. There are maybe six charaters that do stuff but we get introduced to at least twelve for no reason...

- Our main character has zero chemistry with anyone, there are characters that expresses their heart and feelings in a few paragraphs and then he chimes in with "Yeah...", "No I don't...". You can say that's just how he is but then I would say why is he the main character? There are three people I can think of in this story that would be better if they were the main character. No excuses, terrible protagonist.

- Nothing happens in the story, you only get questions and more questions nothing gets answered.

- The ending is really bad.

After all those points if I made you curious and you wanna check it out, don't. There are other "boarding mysterious ship" kind of stories out there that are good and worth the read, like the two I've mentioned in my TL;DR.

Very well written book that unfortunately goes nowhere. We have a lot of mystery build up... and that is it. The book ends without an actual ending and with zero explanation of wtf was going on. Very unsatisfying and too bad, since the premises were very well constructed.
recenzie pe larg: https://bloguldesefe.ro/2021/09/12/cand-uiti-incotro-te-indreptai-in-intuneric-destinatia-gasita-nu-poate-fi-decat-una-singura-ship-of-fools-de-richard-paul-russo/

But...but what WERE they? And what WAS that ending? And what happens AFTER? And where did those missing crewmen go? And what were those weird comatose-like symptoms from? :(