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This is 1950s sci fi safari adventure. It’s not amazing, but it flows well, very readable, but it just didn’t click long term with me, and I checked out a third of the way through. There is a very interesting treatment of teleportation at the start of the book, and that is well worth reading. Spoilers Bester comes up with teleportation, then explores applying limitations to it, then explores…

The plot isn’t spectacular, the ideas aren’t novel (like at all), and the ending doesn’t track, but there’s a nice turnaround at the 3/4 mark. The acting and the mood are SUPERB throughout. It captures the “No one believes me” fear of old people in homes, there’s found family, and a focus on old(er) people, which was refreshing, and there’s a little Daddy-daughter stuff in there. The characters…

I came to this book because someone claimed the Hechee series was the best depiction of aliens they had read. I am no longer taking recommendations from that person.I spent the whole book going “When are we gonna see some action?” At the 99% mark I was like, “OK, maybe these last five pages will have something.” Nope. The writing was fine, probably more than fine, because I kept reading, but…

(Spoilers) This is a tougher, darker and deeper episode than most. It relies entirely on acting and writing for its effect. Props and effects are almost absent. It deals with some tough situations: claustrophobia, being shipwrecked, being lost, frostbite, freezing to death, starving to death not knowing what happened to close friends, feeling helpless against fate. On the brighter side of ledger,…

The story starts strong, with an intriguing premise, fast flow, world, cast of characters and striking writing style. The last quarter of the novel is disappointing: it goes on too long, the writing is weak and it waters down the payoff. Stylistically the writing feels like someone had read a translation of the Ramayana and felt compelled to write science fiction in that tone. Plot wise, it had…

(As usual, spoilers galore) Good: World building The story is excellent at building a far east colonial island vibe with a post apocalyptic post fossil fuels backdrop. This is the first time I’ve read an explorations of a spring powered society (Spring Punk? Tension Punk? Hookes Punk?) and it was quite fun. The book does this really well because a lot of the plot and backdrop is seamless…

I picked this up because I saw it highly recommended. I gave it the standard 20% read and looked up the synopsis online and it was a DNF after that. The primary reason was that it was – to be blunt – incredibly boring and none of the ideas were innovative enough to overcome that dullness. The general pattern of writing was some dialog then a pretty long info dump. As we went on the dialog became…