Review: Extremely well written, but character overloaded
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 9, 2014
Ms. Donovan was kind enough to provide a copy of her book for review.  I do so as a fan of sci-fi stories.I found the book draining.  It's not due to bad writing; on the contrary, it was very well written and almost read like a TV show.  It's just that there is simply too much information being given in the first half of the book.  Second, the chapter progression jumps all over the place, from timezone to timezone and even from physical location to physical location.  It's hard to create a linear attachment of any kind, and I suspect that the bulk of the development could have been more easily done in four/five larger chapters, rather than 30 tiny ones.Clearly, the intent here was character development, and in this sense it did a very good job. The issue is that too much of any thing isn't good; such was the case here.  Stepping into a book expecting a story about life from other places is intriguing.  Unfortunately you don't get to taste that full course dinner until WELL into the book, by which time you may be burned out.  I also suspect that were this a TV program, where there are visual cues to things, it would probably be an amazing experience.  Since the author has to create that imagery in the reader's minds, it ends up just overloading.If you're the sort of reader who enjoys character development, who doesn't really care about the payoff or treats it as "dessert", then you may just enjoy the book.