ben chapman

Read both this and lockdown 2, and they are classic Asher. 1 better than 2 but that's subjective. After a recent Asher scifi, this " old style" is light relief and throws you back to into his earlier, simplier narrative and boy does it read good. Sad to finish them both, but will now return to his beginnings and re-enjoy them again.

where to begin. the characters discover an alien hole on a far distant planet so decide to investigate. Time for character development as they get there. What, too complicated, ok , lets drip feed a bit of info on each then give up. Arrive at planet, set up a bit of tension between the 4 protagonists but lets keep it simple. each appear to have a back story but apart from the lead character Alex lets not bother going into them. onwards then to the hole via transporter, sleds, and finally on foot over many kilometers. cue time to fill in the backstories maybe, what, no, ok, lets make do with the same back story of Alex's retold in dribs and drabs at the end of each chapter - yawn. characters fall out with each other - lets not get into that too deeply, but throw in some religion to spice it up at a very basic level with extra cod philosophy for balance. Oh, there is nothing on the plain they are going over save giant turtle like things which lets not describe nor explain. Finally Alex, gets to look into this giant alien hole and thinks he sees angels , maybe, after all he is probably hallucinating he says to himself. Ok, done that, and end of book. WTF !! this is a complete shaggy dog of a story, 2 dimensional characters you dont care about, poorly explained, written with no interest to the reader on any level. this could have been set in a field of daisies on a particularly rainy day and not lost any momentum. i bought this on recommendation from various website feeds. Hype rules baby.

Sorry people but l can't finish this book, is it me because it seems to be written for 12 year olds. Bought after a recommendation from a book blog site, and the blurb seemed fine for a break from hard sci fi, but after a straight 75 page start l had my worries. All the characters were sketchily drawn, very 2 dimensional, with no sense of depth - ok, perhaps they will flesh out and l will start finding them interesting, but no, loose stories involving them all were patchy and shifting around the characters left no room for development. So the following day gave it another 75 pages, the stories now started getting intertwined but felt really forced and descriptions of scenes, people, everything, were really simplistic. And the first fantasy section kicked in but was so juvenile l simply didn't care if the hero's died or not. And so reluctantly l conclude it was written for young adults and l made a boo boo buying it. Not going to waste time reading the next 250 pages as l don't care about any of the characters and the writing/dialogue is really poor.

First off it's not an action packed aliens v humans galactic fight fest, but a soft touchy feely interaction of a group of people who happen to be set in outer space. It's a easy read, satisfying, and all about how different social norms, habits, views, can be overridden by understanding . It's a feel good book, and sometimes it's good to remember little stories work as well as big ones.