Review: Oh dear.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 03 11, 2014
As noted, I finished reading Wool recently. It was...good, I suppose, though something was missing. Having heard good things, I had a look on my Kindle for Runner. I couldn't find it, so I went for this.Oh dear indeed. Well, the concept is good, and has a lot of intriguing potential. I also have to honestly give it props for unintentionally hilarious writing. A gay character named Ace Ender and a lot of probably unintended homoerotic descriptions had me howling with laughter. However, there's a certain heart and earnestness to it that are commendable, and I agree with reviewers who mentioned that it was something missing from the original Wool.On the down side...well...I try not to say this, but it could have used editing. There were some mechanical things and split sentences and whatnot that really got in the way. I try to avoid criticizing a lack of proofreading, because usually it seems like a cheap thing to do, but in this case, it was pretty noticeable. It's not so much that there are typos as that the writing needed a second set of eyes.The worst part is that the book basically just rehashes the plot of Wool, so all those extra bits and variations aren't much. The characters are...well...they're very cliched. The chunks of naked exposition lining the highway of the story also stand out too nakedly. Also, an abortion storyline that felt kind of outta place crops up. It's handled...well, the male character basically makes the decision about the abortion for the female character, and...yeahhhh. I was going to give this a higher rating, but the thinly disguised pro-life preaching was too much.However, it's a solid concept and I can see why a lot of people liked it. I couldn't get past the writing, but if you're up for an unintentional parody, this is pure gold.