Thread: Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?
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Old 06-18-2017, 08:18 PM   #26003
Rev. Bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rev. Bob View Post
I've been slogging through Cassandra Rose Clarke's Star's End, which was pitched to me as being space opera.

It isn't. Like, at all. [...]

Instead, we get enough cold, clinical information to see it coming hundreds of pages in advance, so that when the emotional climax finally arrives, it packs no punch. The heart of the story is reduced to the last piece in a puzzle we've already assembled.
Finally finished this one. I do have to correct the paragraph above; the author did manage to pull some plot tension out of the climactic events... but only in terms of what happened, not its emotional impact. We already knew - almost from page one - that this event ripped the family apart, so there's no shock in seeing that actually come to pass.

The switch from first-person "then" to third-person "now" is pointlessly baffling, given that it's the same main character in both modes. Key scientific assertions are ludicrous on their face, which yanked me out of the story not simply because That Doesn't Do That, but because a purportedly bright character actually falls for a transparently awful and stupid lie related to one.

I'm giving it two stars, because it was generally written well and I liked what I could see of the setting. I just wish the story told in it had been about more sympathetic characters.
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