I'm reading this book and I'm close to 25% done and I'm not seeing anything yet that justifies such positive reviews. Does this book take a long time to set up before the good stuff happens? I'm trying to decide how much longer I should give it before I bail.

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8 years ago
5 answers

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Benelie It's not the kind of book that have huge scenes of action. It's more about the crew than the action. I think that everyone (me included) liked or loved the relationship between the characters and the world the author developped during thi book.

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Henry Try 'Red Rising'; this is not your kind of book. Don't think of 'goodreads' comments as reviews. They are just personal responses and say as much about the reader as the writer. For myself, I enjoyed this book a lot.

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DiscoSpacePanther There is no "good stuff" that happens in the book. It is all tired clichés and thin characterisations. Conflicts are raised and resolved within 10 pages or so, leaving no room for tension or character arcs. It is as if the author was following the junior-school approach to story writing: "This happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and they were all friends at the end".

The writer has some ideas, but the material presented isn't quite good enough as a first draft. She needed a good editor to provide guidance on how to whip the narrative into shape, and to perhaps trot out the truism "conflict is the essence of drama", because the writer hasn't quite grasped it.

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Francisco No. I'm close to 65% and nothing has happened yet. I don't understand all those positive reviews. And no, don't tell me the book is about the interactions between the protagonists because those are silly and boring. To me, it's like reading a children book. A happy crew visiting happy people and traveling happily through space and...nothing more. Flower Power.

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