Review: Fun space opera
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 20, 2014
I received a review copy of this book via Goodreads' "Don't Buy My Love" program in exchange for an honest review.This book was written in the style of classic space operas, with sharp, clean prose and a fair amount of scientific-ish handwaving. It is not really a romance, so don't start the book expecting a lot of heartfelt character growth or relationship building.I appreciated the yes-I've-read-a-ton-of-old-time-sf feel to the story -- Arshad is obviously familiar with the genre. However, I thought that the classic-sf flavor -- that plot-driven, tech-focused, sf-authors-are-all-manly-men-and-we-don't-write-about-feelings flavor often got in the way of the romance and character aspects of the story. The emotional aspects often ended up seeming to be tacked on rather than an integral part of the story. With Martin in particular, we'd be **told** he was pining for someone or emotionally invested in someone -- but I usually didn't really feel it. And when lives were lost, I didn't really feel his pain -- and I didn't feel pain either, since I had never been introduced to those characters previously.And then the maybe-they're-bad-guys, maybe-they-aren't characters -- I liked them as characters just fine, but they didn't seem at all consistent in their motivations. I understand the concept of trying to keep readers guessing, but I was not convinced by their apparent 180s. I won't spoil it here, but I needed more on their shifting priorities and more clarity on what else they were trying to accomplish and why.Nonetheless, it IS a pretty fun story. The pseudoscience holds together well enough and the writing is intelligent, and even though I'm not a big fan of time-travel tales I appreciated the multiple complications of messing with timelines that were acknowledged here. The plot does carry you right along without noticeable dead spots, and it left me wanting to know what happens next. So it was a success in that aspect, for sure.I'm not going to give this a full 4 stars, because I could just feeeeeeel all those emotions trying to break out but being squelched left and right -- and it was quite frustrating at times. But the book deserves more than a flat 3 for its entertainment value. Over all, I'm going to give this one about 3.5 stars. Rounding up for now -- you never know, I may feel less generous on further reflection.