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andypeloquinauthor's review against another edition
3.0
I'm not a huge science fiction fan, but I was willing to approach this book with an open mind. The first chapter had my interest (I love a mysterious extraterrestrial object as much as the next guy), but from the moment the rest of the characters were introduced, my interest waned a bit.
For starters, there is A LOT of head-hopping (randomly changing POV without a break in the story). There is a lot of story going on, but there is no real sense of the character. There is almost no inner dialogue going on, nothing to show us what the characters are thinking or feeling beyond their facial expressions and words. For this reason, it's hard for us to care about the characters, because we can never see through their eyes.
The wording also tended to push me out of the POV just as I was getting into the character's frame of mind. That random switching of POV really made it hard to read, and it made it even harder to connect to the characters.
There was one scene where a character is alone in the dark, and that was the only time that I actually felt like I was in the character's head. The rest of the time there is very little "sense of place", and there was nothing to engage my senses.
Also, the characters are UBER-aggressive. While having one or two aggressive characters is understandable, it was like the entire book was one bad word away from having everyone knife each other. I almost expected there to be some alien mind-control causing all the aggression and anger, but it was just the characters. Not realistic at all, and this is coming from me--a fairly aggressive person by nature. Just too much testosterone.
That being said, the story's twists and turns definitely surprised me, and I found it intriguing. I kept wanting the characters to explore more of the ship to see if they would find alien life, or if they were alone. The ending may have disappointed me, but the buildup to that point was pretty good.
For starters, there is A LOT of head-hopping (randomly changing POV without a break in the story). There is a lot of story going on, but there is no real sense of the character. There is almost no inner dialogue going on, nothing to show us what the characters are thinking or feeling beyond their facial expressions and words. For this reason, it's hard for us to care about the characters, because we can never see through their eyes.
The wording also tended to push me out of the POV just as I was getting into the character's frame of mind. That random switching of POV really made it hard to read, and it made it even harder to connect to the characters.
There was one scene where a character is alone in the dark, and that was the only time that I actually felt like I was in the character's head. The rest of the time there is very little "sense of place", and there was nothing to engage my senses.
Also, the characters are UBER-aggressive. While having one or two aggressive characters is understandable, it was like the entire book was one bad word away from having everyone knife each other. I almost expected there to be some alien mind-control causing all the aggression and anger, but it was just the characters. Not realistic at all, and this is coming from me--a fairly aggressive person by nature. Just too much testosterone.
That being said, the story's twists and turns definitely surprised me, and I found it intriguing. I kept wanting the characters to explore more of the ship to see if they would find alien life, or if they were alone. The ending may have disappointed me, but the buildup to that point was pretty good.
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