Redshift0

Short Story Between Book 7 and 8

Reviewed: 06-05-24

While this book was published last, it falls in the characters' timeline between books 7 and 8 in the series and makes more sense when read in that order. On their way back from Rome to Britannia, Ruso and Tilla stumble into the middle of a murder near Ruso's family home in Gaul. It's an enjoyable little story for anyone who has read the other books, but it leaves out a lot of context of their overall story, so it's not a good place to start.

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Fun sequel that doesn't disappoint

Reviewed: 11-25-20

Just finished listening, and it felt very much like the original. (I just relistened to parts of the first book beforehand and the transition was pretty seamless.) A number of dangling plot elements from the first book weave their way into the new story, which takes on (lightly) some of the bigger questions and fears about virtual reality and AI. And of course there is a multi-faceted desperate puzzle-quest with lots and lots of 80s nostalgia. I could quibble about several things, but unlike many sequels I've read, this one did not disappoint.

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4 people found this helpful

No One to Like

Reviewed: 04-03-20

There's some very good stuff in this story along with some silly basic science and logic errors that make it difficult to review. The biggest problem, though, is there are no appealing characters, and even the just-okay ones are killed off (usually in gruesome detail). I ended up feeling more sympathetic for the aliens, who were just protecting their home, than any of the humans, who are all different degrees of despicable. That made the genocidal climax of the story a bit hard to take. Definitely not interested in a sequel as hinted in the epilogue.

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Finally, LitRPG that has Lit like Ready Player One

Reviewed: 03-06-20

Let me begin by saying I really liked Ready Player One, and in the search for similar books, I saw suggestions that I should try LitRPG. I went through many of those, but they were all so heavily into the RPG side of the equation that I was disappointed. Some were good, even very good, but they didn't have the balance of "Lit" (by which I mean real-life as opposed to game life) that I enjoyed in RPO.

I'm not saying this book is as good as RPO, but after 20 or so other LitRPG novels it's quite a relief to finally find an author interested in real-world character development in addition to spectacular gaming scenes.

What's interesting here are the multiple layers of plot: personal high-school battles, corporate profit vs. game safety intrigues, development of an artificial intelligence and its "human rights," and of course the action within the RPG itself. Its a complex plot running at different times and locales, but all interconnected, which makes up for a lot of well-trodden ideas.

There are some background weaknesses in this book having to do with not-very-well worked out details of the game itself. If time is running 3-4 times faster in the game world, the switch back and forth to the real world doesn't make sense for various parts of the story. The book mentions these issues, but it ignores resulting problems except when it's convenient to the plot. In addition, the characters are pretty shallow and one-dimensional, and the game is focused on a small population, only plausible if they came from one city instead of around the world. (Simple example, is there really just one Jason and one Frank among the millions who sign up?) The opening was probably suggested by an editor who wanted an exciting start, but it's just confusing if you don't know that Jason is going to be the protagonist, so reread it after you finish.

The biggest problem with the audio version is the narrator. He does good "nerd" and "stiff computer character" but the rest of the voices are a mess. He doesn't have distinct voices for each character, the accents of individual characters change at times, his narration voice is often the same as the character voice in the surrounding text, etc. This makes it hard to figure out who is speaking without paying close attention to the exact wording. I don't want to be mean, but it sounds like someone reading it for the first time.

So the story has some flaws, and the narration is weak, but I'm still giving this 5 stars overall because it's such a relief after all the overly RPG-heavy books I've read.

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Complex and Profound

Reviewed: 05-24-17

There are some books that are difficult to read but that make you stop and think about things in whole new ways. This is one of those books. Yes, the story is hard to follow at times. The many characters voices are not explained, and it is left to the reader to suss out the connections and significance of what they are saying. There are aspects of a thriller and a mystery that propel the story, but nothing is straight forward. We the readers are like a jury hearing the various points of view, sometimes conflicting, sometimes achingly difficult to hear. Many characters lie to themselves and to each other, but many are able to find redemption in the end. The book has given me an entirely new perspective on witchcraft trials as well as modern trials and how deeply they are tied to common prejudices. Really quite a remarkable book.

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Weak sci-fi but still somewhat engaging

Reviewed: 08-23-16

This is free on Kindle Unlimited so I gave it a try. The enthusiasm of the writer is engaging, but there are so many problems of plot, science, and plausibility that I can't recommend it to anyone who is paying for it.

The problem with creating all sorts of magical extensions of physics and biology is then to be consistent in their application. The characters otherwise come across as seeming extraordinarily stupid when they don't take advantage of the abilities they have and the story line becomes highly contrived. There are too many places where the ship's captain seems foolish or needlessly reckless in the decisions he makes when he could so easily jump back to the Solar System for advice and to provide warning. Likewise, the hostile aliens with their own amazing technologies are made to seem stupid. For example, why do they focus all their attention on getting all their ships shot up by the heroic captain instead of sending one ship to destroy the targeted planet, which they've already demonstrated that they can easily do?

The complaints I read about the author's basic writing skills (in earlier editions of this book) are mostly cleared up, although there are still a lot of things an editor should have caught. For example, "reparation" instead of "repair," "elliptic" instead of "ecliptic," and double negatives gone confusingly wrong. The narrator also does not provide a completely consistent voice or accent for each character, so I found myself guessing wrong who was speaking at various points of the story.

Despite all these problems, there's the germ of an interesting story here, and the author is certainly enthusiastic in describing battle scenes. If you've got it free on Kindle Unlimited, you can't complain about the price!

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Nice tale, but it feels forced in many ways

Reviewed: 07-17-15

Any additional comments?

There are some very nice elements of this story, but the plot and setting just seem to get jammed up much of the time. Wil Wheaton rescues the story with an enthusiastic rendition, but the science (and therefore the science fiction) are full of holes that are hard to overlook as much as I tried.

What makes this worth listening to is that there are some nice 80s and 90s memorabilia, some (small) surprising twists on familiar plots, and an upbeat story.

What drags it down is some very weak science that often seems invented to make the story fit into the time frame that would fit with the father-son connection and pop-culture period that the author wants to use for background material. There are big holes in simple astronomical facts* (noted below to avoid spoilers), the physics is silly, again seemingly invented to allow the story line to fit in the preconceived timeline,** and the bad-guy and famous-guy characters seem like ridiculous numb skulls at times.

I note that readers of the text version of the book are giving this significantly lower ratings than audible listeners, and I think the credit for that goes to Wil Wheaton, who makes it an entertaining summer listen. Unfortunately, unlike Ready Player One, this isn't one that I would enjoy listening to a second time.

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SPOILERS:

*One plot element involves the aliens traveling from Jupiter to Earth. The clock hits zero when they are near Mars's orbit and almost instantly are then attacking Earth. Last I checked Mars's orbit is actually about 50 million miles (plus or minus) from Earth. If this were a single slip up, I would blame a sleepy editor, but there are many more timing implausibilities as the characters sometimes jump around the Earth or Solar System, and at other times take long periods of time. The author seems to have little sense of distances or speeds throughout the story, and they are ignored whenever the story line requires it.

**Really, instantaneous communication? zero-inertia fields? artificial gravity? and it's all just dropped into the lap of a few militaristic types and kept secret from everyone else? This all seems invented just to support the notion that people playing video games in their living rooms can take part in epic battles taking place light-minutes or light-seconds distant, and that they'll feel like they're sitting on their couches even when they travel in space ships or while on the Moon. It's a little disappointing that the author doesn't try a little harder to be realistic, instead of throwing out every physical constraint that interferes with making real space travel just like a video game.

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