Review: Formulaic, but this author needs time to mature and a strong editor
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 30, 2012
Kowalski is a well-liked reviewer on a computer tech website, and he has a lot of good will going into publishing this, his first novel. The temptation is to give the novel a higher review than it deserves (and I think the 4.5 average review reflects that) in an effort to be supportive. And I'd like to do that too, but it just doesn't deserve it, as it's not creative enough. How:1) Characters: there's nothing wrong with the characters, but there's also nothing interesting or original about them. This isn't unusual for quick-and-easy SF novels, but that doesn't change it. I didn't find the characters to be memorable at all, just actors in the plot.2) This is one of those "Earth in the future when a few huge, powerful organizations (or whatever ilk, it never matters) control things in an evil way." Not badly executed, but nothing original.3) The hero, nothing about whom ever makes him seem other than 'everyman', is thrust into new and dangerous situations and yet copes almost as well as James Bond. Again, we've seen it before.4) This to me is the most distracting thing, and it's what I find all of the time in self-published novels now that one can do electronic publishing on Amazon for free: There are just too many cliched phrases, usually made so by cliched adjectives and verbs. For instance, the SUV at the beginning of this novel "barrels" through an intersection. Of course it does, but it was too easy and pat a way to describe it. A few of these doesn't hurt, but when you start counting them, it hurts. It's a bit like someone describing someone as a "hapless victim" (though this isn't an example from this novel). Why "hapless"? And have you ever seen the word hapless used in any other way? A real editor would have have made Cyril justify some of these or remove it.I expect this review to be heavily down-voted, because it's going to be seen as an attack on the author or unsupportive, especially as it's his first novel and was free. Perhaps if I thought that this was the best he could do I'd just omit the review entirely, as I get the impression from what he's written that he's a nice guy and I wish him well, and I suspect that if he writes more novels, they will get better. But I don't think it helps him to pretend that this is a 4 or 5 start SF novel.