Review: Poorly Written Dialogue Makes this a Challenging Read.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 10, 2013
I was given this book in exchange for an honest review. I really wanted to like it. The cover was amazing. The book blurb about a man stuck on a ship being sucked into a black hole was fascinating.Unfortunately, the book has almost nothing to do with the book blurb.  That interesting lead in takes up less than a chapter before the book unravels in a random series of encounters that lead nowhere.WHY I DIDN'T LIKE ITMy main critique of Black Hull is how it deals with dialogue. Many chapters have large, extended sections without a line of exposition, description, or dialogue markers. They are all dialogue. Not even a "he said". This makes it very difficult for the reader to follow who is saying what. It also left me very unattached to the characters because it was difficult to create a visual image of them or the action.For example:Chapter 17"At the T-Jump?""Yup.""How long?""Couple of days.""And how long after until you'll reach Utopia?""I don't know. Could be a month. I've got to stop off to do dad's transfer.""Who'll do that?""Cheapest? A droid on the West Rail Sector."This section goes on like this for several pages. What it's missing is something to help the reader get a clear visual of who is saying what and what are they doing as they say it. Writers need to create a mental movie in the mind of the reader. This book fails to do that.On a formatting note, there was no table of contents at the beginning of the book. This is a very helpful feature in ebooks and is an easy fix the author should consider. NOTE: After conferring with the author, I realized it can be viewed by using the "Go To Table of Contents" feature.IN CONCLUSIONI really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately, it would need a massive rewrite before I could give it anything but a two star. I see another review said nearly the same thing as I did but for some reason they gave it a 4 star. People, please don't do this. You are helping no one and devaluing the rating system.