Review: Too much stuff going on...finish this story please
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 1, 2011
Joe's book is fantastically written. I love his ability to describe things, and even though I'm not a fan of first-person, Joe showed me that perhaps I should change my mind.>>>>>> SPOILER ALERT <<<<<<<<<Michael and Terra are two dynamic characters with just enough quirks to add tension to their interactions. The love between them seemed to grow out of necessity, and I don't think I like that as much as if it could have grown organically (necessity being that she's the only woman and he's the only man in the solar system).Genesis Earth failed to earn its fifth star from me simply because the story has no sense of being complete. It's almost as if the author had attention deficit disorder.  He introduces a fascinating ghost ship that is millions of years old, has his character spend maybe fifteen minutes aboard it, and then it zips off to never be seen or heard from again.  The tension in this scene was amazing. But I kept asking myself...uh...when are we going back to the ghost ship? Is it going to return through the wormhole? But nope.Okay fine.So he introduces another idea. We find a layer of nanobots in the strata of the planet Icaria and Michael surmises that the nanobots were probably responsible for some horrible apocalypse in the planet's past.  Wow! That sounds fascinating.  Is any of this relevant? Nope...it's just background stuff and has no impact on the story whatsoever.Again I'm left scratching my head. Really? This could be a whole novel in and of itself.Okay fine.Next the author introduces us to a sentient race of Ewok-like humans who start to worship them. Okay, this could also be fascinating. Tell me about their culture...tell me who they are, show me their language, immerse me in the Avatar-like world of the Naavi and show me things I can only begin to imagine.Nope...Michael and Terra just get some face paint, don a hat, and decide that Icaria is cool enough to plant their roots.In the epilogue, the author advances the timeline by a year, shows Terra is about a month away from birth, and they are content to bid goodbye to their spaceship with all the technology and medicine they may need to keep their family safe.Like really? Why would you do that with a baby on the way?Genesis Earth is an enjoyable read but Joe has way too much stuff circling around in the story that it could literally fill a ten-book series. He has a powerful imagination, he just needs to actually clean up these loose ends in my opinion. If he does this, he'll really have something. Either that, or he needs to put out sequels to this book that answer these questions and pronto.  As is, the story is simply not complete at all unless you consider a woman about to give birth a finish line of some kind. I certainly don't.