Reviews

Trust by David Moody

mishareilly's review

medium-paced

4.0

Still a good book, just not as good ad the Hater series. Mysterious as always. 

trudilibrarian's review against another edition

3.0

David Moody fans (or sci-fi junkies) will be pleased to note that he has made this title available online for free at this website until about the end of January. And it's pretty damn fine. Not as strong as [b:Hater|263460|Hater (Hater, #1)|David Moody|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1266509430s/263460.jpg|255392], but perhaps it isn't even fair to compare the two because in a lot of ways they are very different stories.

Imagine if you will your average particle accelerator -- the Hadron Collider if you please. But instead of smashing sub-atomic particles into one another, let's say you're David Moody and you decide you want to take Shaun of the Dead and violently crash it into M. Night's Signs and Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind until you're left with this existential, entertaining mash-up of a story that's reflective, funny, and chilling in its probabilities.

Tom Winter is your average English bloke who has left his high pressure job in the city and retreated to the very small coastal town of Thatcham. His parents have recently died and he and his younger brother are trying to put their lives back together. Into this small town an unidentified aircraft of behemoth size deposits aliens from an advanced civilization. They claim they have come in peace. They claim they only want our help to get home. But are they telling the truth?

Moody is not giving us an action-packed, pulse-pounding story about an alien invasion here; rather, he's focusing on the psychological and philosophical ramifications of human behavior in the face of a peaceful close encounter of the third kind. It's pretty interesting actually the way characters behave, how they gradually grow to accept the aliens as non-threatening visitors, the questions it makes them ask of themselves and of one another, the deep desire to weigh in on meatier moral issues and "the meaning of life."

It's a slow build that did feel like it goes on a little too long in parts. I started to get a bit twitchy; I just wanted something to happen. In a way, that's very effective writing though. If the aliens do land in peace and it turns out to be pretty innocuous and ordinary, our human reaction might very well be to wish for something more outlandish and mind-blowing. This can't be all there is? Surely, there's something else to occur.

When the direction of the story does change, it happens abruptly and is over quickly. I guess I wish there had been more of a balance between the first three parts and parts four and five. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it though, or that I don't appreciate what Moody is trying to do here, I just longed for more B-movie action and less navel-gazing character angst.

klieber's review against another edition

1.0

The book is slow and meandering, without any sort of clear purpose. The author tries to develop the characters, without any sort of real success. His metaphors are overplayed and his writing style in general feels a bit....forced.

Just generally not a good book, unfortunately.

i_dream_of_books's review against another edition

4.0

David Moody has such a fantastic writing style. He brings you along on journeys that are impossible, but all the while you are inside the mind of the main character. This story in particular was interesting in that way. Tom is a normal guy, doing normal things, living in a small town. The story opens with him on his morning run. As he's running, an alien spaceship flies overhead changing history forever. Why are they here? Is this going to end like every other sci-fi movie? I don't want to spoil anything, but the ending of this book is amazing. It has a very modern take on what an alien encounter would be like today. It's not super fast-paced, but it's definitely a slow burn. In one sitting I read 75% of this book because I couldn't put it down. The implications of this book are terrifying. Fans of The Host (Stephenie Meyer), War of the worlds (H.G. Wells), or The Fifth Wave (Rick Yancey) should check out this book. Or if you just like aliens, or other novels by David Moody, give it a try.