The Stars My Destination

The Stars My Destination

1955 • 278 pages

Ratings198

Average rating3.9

15

Firstly, I'd like to say I enjoyed this book, but there were many points in the book that made me scratch my head and it starts with the premise.

Basically the whole book is just a revenge story from a perceived slight of the main character. Gully gets stranded on a floating wreck and then doesn't get picked up by a passing ship. That's enough to send him on this epic quest to exact complete and utter revenge?

I do like the underlying theme of the book: with enough willpower you too can become great. The book starts out describing Gully as an underachiever (something we can all relate to) but we watch him quickly become powerful due to the sheer strength of his willpower. I'm just not sure the perceived slight which set him off would really be that motivating for 99% of characters. The whole book I kept thinking “man, this sure is a lot of trouble and death defying in order to exact revenge”.

I love the universe in which this story takes place. I just wish it would have been explored more - honestly, I felt like the story got in the way of my desire to see more of the jaunting and telepathic world! That's another thing - I felt like the author kept adding these duex ex machina devices to level the playing field. First it was telepathy (fine, why not- people can teleport why not telepathy too?), then the whisper channel in the prison (why on earth would that be there, but OK some buildings in DC have that too), then the TIME ACCELERATION TEETH (really?), PyrE (an explosive that can only be blown up telepathically?), then finally time travel itself. It just felt hacky to me.

All in all, still a decent enough read. The main character is a bit more vicious and barbaric than I felt was warranted given his reason for revenge and the author took some liberties to finish out the story, but I still had a fun time reading it.

February 18, 2015