When reviewing, it sometimes is confusing... the feelings. To give a bad review is difficult, especially considering the review will go live. Originally, I decided to give silent reviews to any books I wouldn't be featuring on Fanboys Anonymous, instead of writing bad reviews for the world to see. In my opinion, it's quite fitting, especially considering I don't necessarily believe some deserve a "bad review" per se. For the most part, some stories just need a little detail, a little tweaking. Recently, I was approached by an editor about only giving positive reviews though. I was told it hurts my credibility, and the fact of the matter is that that's true. I've written a lot of short stories and books, and I would personally rather not tear someone else's work down, especially since I've got more than fifteen publisher rejections in my email.
I told Thadd Evans that I wasn't interested in featuring his book on Fanboys Anonymous—giving him a silent review—because the book was so fast-paced that I thought the story suffered from a lack of detail. Here I sit now, thinking that I was actually quite mean. I did enjoy the story, and who am I anyway?
The fact of the matter is, Thadd Evans's Portal 2212 was very fast-paced and the book did suffer because of it, but I can't mention it without also complimenting the book. It was because of the same fast pace that I burned through the reading and completed it in no time at all. It read so quickly, in fact, that it was practically a science fiction adventure movie in my mind. Arguably, that's a good thing.
This space travel story blasts off from the setting of a ship. It's a traveling vessel, going from one point in the deep to another. The main characters are some human clones and their machines (AI) who haven't yet found a planet to call their own, but whose paths are somehow detoured to a wild planet with odd and unexplained advancements in technology. They are overwhelmed by untamed civilizations and incalculable dangers.
I enjoyed the science in Portal 2212, though some of it lacked the level of description I needed to make good sense of it. It still snatched up my interest. The hard science was reminiscent of an Analog magazine story. My thoughts are that the sci-fi tale itself would be better off as a short installment in a series—chronicling the clones from the beginning of their journey to the end, with this particular story coming up somewhere in the middle—or even as a graphic novel, but it was a tad disappointing to read from the point I came in. Those were my exact sentiments and, with the small possibility of slight differences, that's exactly what I told him.
Tell me what you think below.
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