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to talk about A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and the sequel, A Close and Common Orbit.
Coincidentally, I just got around to reading them.
The science behind their spaceflight is implausible, but you know what? Nobody trips over their own two feet because their ship stopped accelerating, nor does that equal a dead stop, and I'm okay with that. It's a low bar, and they clear it.
Otherwise, I'm waiting on the third book. They're very character-driven novels, and so different from each other. The first, in particular, reads like a TV series, with each chapter its own standalone episode. It was hard for me not to hear the characters as those from the various Enterprises, and at one point I was half-expecting somebody to suddenly declaim on freedom and self-determination and the Prime Directive. If Q had popped by to deliver a moral lesson, a pizza, and a couple of Borg I would've been utterly unsurprised.
There's a narrative hidden in the road trip, but it's really about the journey.
And then in the sequel we've got alternating viewpoint chapters, past and present, and instead of a crew journeying together they're very much about separate people being individuals, and also freedom and self-determination. I expected more of the same, and it... really wasn't.
There are probably things I can say about the stories and the characters and all that... but really, I'm stuck on the vastly different writing styles from two books by the same author set in the same universe with some overlapping characters. I'll save all other commentary for after I've read the next one.
Coincidentally, I just got around to reading them.
The science behind their spaceflight is implausible, but you know what? Nobody trips over their own two feet because their ship stopped accelerating, nor does that equal a dead stop, and I'm okay with that. It's a low bar, and they clear it.
Otherwise, I'm waiting on the third book. They're very character-driven novels, and so different from each other. The first, in particular, reads like a TV series, with each chapter its own standalone episode. It was hard for me not to hear the characters as those from the various Enterprises, and at one point I was half-expecting somebody to suddenly declaim on freedom and self-determination and the Prime Directive. If Q had popped by to deliver a moral lesson, a pizza, and a couple of Borg I would've been utterly unsurprised.
There's a narrative hidden in the road trip, but it's really about the journey.
And then in the sequel we've got alternating viewpoint chapters, past and present, and instead of a crew journeying together they're very much about separate people being individuals, and also freedom and self-determination. I expected more of the same, and it... really wasn't.
There are probably things I can say about the stories and the characters and all that... but really, I'm stuck on the vastly different writing styles from two books by the same author set in the same universe with some overlapping characters. I'll save all other commentary for after I've read the next one.
