I liked the book a lot. The story was nicely conducted and it made me keep wanting to read more to find out what happened next. The story is also well balanced between the different characters, and I was able to follow it easily without getting lost between the different characters, which often happens for me.
I especially enjoyed the mistery about Dr. Silver before the first jump, when we find out she's up to something but don't know if she's a villain or not.
I also liked a lot the scene in which they first test the freighter equipped with the drive, when everybody's watching from inside the satellite. The way people cheer when the ship comes back was moving.
One thing that kept me from enjoying this book more was the women. There is an unnaturally high number of exceptionally beautiful women in this book, and lots of time are spent explaining how this particular woman is as hot as this other particular woman, even though they have very different types of beauty.
This made the book less believable, and I had a harder time caring about the characters because of that. Throughout my reading I had a hard time trying to figure out if the book was meant purely for enjoyment, like having a fun read and then forget about it, or if we were meant to empathise with the characters. I was able to empathise with the male characters (well, not Gordon!), but not most of the female ones.
In the same vein, one thing that I thought was out of place was when Reya suggested Julian should sleep with Kris on the first day she comes into CnC. I mean, there are tensions between Verdant and the US, and Kris is a diplomat/spy from the US, sleeping with her really does not seem like a casual, harmless thing to do!
Finally, I saw the movie 2012 on friday, and I found it reminiscent of this book. I don't know if it was because I'd just read it or not, but many details seemed familiar, in particular the Yellowstone eruption. But in the end the 'ships' designed to save humanity are not exactly satellites.
Did anyone else see the movie? (If you haven't seen it, don't take my post as a recommandation for it!
