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The Anomaly Quartet #1
The Explorer: A Deep Space Murder Thriller of Isolation and Survival
A tense, claustrophobic and gripping science fiction thriller from the author of The Testimony.
When journalist Cormac Easton is selected to document the first manned mission into deep space, he dreams of securing his place in history as one of humanity’s great explorers.
But in space, nothing goes according to plan.
The crew wake from hypersleep to discover their captain dead in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue.
But as the body count begins to rise, Cormac finds himself alone and spiralling towards his own inevitable death … unless he can do something to stop it.
When journalist Cormac Easton is selected to document the first manned mission into deep space, he dreams of securing his place in history as one of humanity’s great explorers.
But in space, nothing goes according to plan.
The crew wake from hypersleep to discover their captain dead in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue.
But as the body count begins to rise, Cormac finds himself alone and spiralling towards his own inevitable death … unless he can do something to stop it.
264 pages, Paperback
First published December 20, 2012
62 people are currently reading
2690 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 309 reviews
July 26, 2016
Look, there are spoilers in this, I'm not even going to put up the little "Spoilers" thing in italics, it doesn't deserve it. If you don't want to be warned about this book, then stop reading HERE<=
This book is like the movie "Primer" in outer-space. Mixed with Groundhog Day. Mixed with the movie "Moon".
This is the most disappointing book I have read all year. Bar-None.
The synopsis of the book is ENTIRELY misleading. Just read the synopsis and prepare yourself to have the book be nothing like that at all. I mean, alot of us are thinking to ourselves, "Yes! The next 'The Martian'." Right? But besides being stranded in outer space(if that's even where they were), the two books couldn't be further apart in quality or theme. For a while there I seriously thought the guy ripped off the movie, "The Moon". Honest to God.
Then there is the actual SCIENCE of the book. Let's go down a bit of the list, shall we?
-The ship just suddenly "stops" in space when the engines aren't moving, and that's when there IS gravity. ???????
-When the ship stops, it doesn't keep going at the same speed or drifting, it just stops. The characters in the book actually speculate on whether they are drifting when the engines are off. Seriously? A third grader could tell you things keep going in space. My God.
-The ship can communicate all the way back to earth IMMEDIATELY, with no delay, even though they are WAY out in the solar system. How exactly? And then there is no contact with them for most of the book. What???
-An extra guy goes completely unnoticed in a tiny spacecraft for years??? Seriously??? That's a biggie right there. I mean do you think the Apollo 13 astronauts could have just "overlooked" an extra guy floating around their ship for a few years??? Oh, the humanity!
-The same said guy spends these years addicted to pain killers and living inside A WALL of the spacecraft with a broken leg. Yeah, I'm not kidding.
-They use the word "Warp". I can't even think of a funny comment appropriate enough for that literary cluster.
Usually, I am not a stickler for this sort of stuff as long as the author makes it work. Obviously, using REAL physics is preferable to having a willy-nilly, free for all in space, regarding pretty much everything that has to do with REAL LIFE. However, there is SO much wrong with this book that it is annoying. It would be like someone coming in and writing about what you do for work, but just making up 99% of it and then putting it on the shelves for people to pick up. Then writing a synopsis of the book that pretty much describes what you actually DO, but have the book be nothing at all like that. You would be like, "What the heck? Total falseness. Misrepresentation much?"
I feel like this book has turned me into "that guy" who points out all the things wrong with comic book movies that the rest of us don't notice and just want the movie to be cool as shit. We don't really care about the details as long as the story floats our boat. Does anyone really care that Wolverine doesn't wear a ridiculous yellow suit manufactured in the 80's all the time? Hell no, we just want him to tear the shit out of some bad guys and throw some witty one liners in there. That's why we watch it. "That Guy", comic book guy, sinks your boat as you want to talk about how cool the movie is.
This guy(Smythe, the author if "The Explorer". This rant has gone on for quite some time and you may have forgotten by now.) not only sinks the boat, but first he misleads you into the boat, then he drags you out to the middle of the ocean, where you can call anyone anytime you want but he doesn't let you, teases you with food and water but doesn't let you have any, let's your body degrade down into nothingness, then begins pouring acid over your body, and then makes you drop acid about twice a minute. Then he pokes tiny holes in the boat and lets the water come in really really slowly(this represents how long and frustrating the book is to read), then the boat sinks and you think you are finally going to be eaten by a bunch of sharks, or at least drown, but you just have an aneurysm right there and die before you are two feet under. Disappointing even for the sharks! That's pretty much a description of the emotional journey the book takes you on.
I GET that alot of people don't like or understand movies like "Momento", or "Primer" or other high-concept stuff. I get it, I really do, it's not for everyone. But this book was not only NOT GOOD, it deliberately leads people, that would normally read in this genre, to something that is totally NOT in the genre. It should be in the genre of "80's B-Movie acid trip story-line".
I'm sorry. This is probably the harshest criticism I have ever given for a book. I absolutely CANNOT believe that so many people gave it such high ratings. Did they read the same book I did? The one with the guy floating out in space on a tether? Are they SURE it's the same book. Because right now I am checking the cover of the book I just read and making sure I am reviewing the right book.
(checking book cover art)
Yep, I'm on the right book.
I am shocked I spent this long on a one star review. Hopefully someone read it after they read the book and "likes" the review because they GET the review. Honestly, I would LOVE to have a conversation with ANYONE who gave it a good review and ask them one simple question: WHY???
Total and abject disappointment. It was a good thing I wrote this review right now, because if I would have waited any longer I would have given it "0" stars. I know, you are saying to yourself, "Goodreads doesn't allow a user to give "0" stars for a review", oh but I would make it happen for this book!
Question: Can you permanently delete a book from your Nook?
This is NOT a Troll review either. This is a dead serious review. I am sorry if Mr. Smythe is mad at this review, but seriously. I mean, come on. It doesn't even have an ending.
And that's not a spoiler, that's a warning!
(I have no idea what I am going to do with the sequel I already have downloaded on my Nook.)
This book is like the movie "Primer" in outer-space. Mixed with Groundhog Day. Mixed with the movie "Moon".
This is the most disappointing book I have read all year. Bar-None.
The synopsis of the book is ENTIRELY misleading. Just read the synopsis and prepare yourself to have the book be nothing like that at all. I mean, alot of us are thinking to ourselves, "Yes! The next 'The Martian'." Right? But besides being stranded in outer space(if that's even where they were), the two books couldn't be further apart in quality or theme. For a while there I seriously thought the guy ripped off the movie, "The Moon". Honest to God.
Then there is the actual SCIENCE of the book. Let's go down a bit of the list, shall we?
-The ship just suddenly "stops" in space when the engines aren't moving, and that's when there IS gravity. ???????
-When the ship stops, it doesn't keep going at the same speed or drifting, it just stops. The characters in the book actually speculate on whether they are drifting when the engines are off. Seriously? A third grader could tell you things keep going in space. My God.
-The ship can communicate all the way back to earth IMMEDIATELY, with no delay, even though they are WAY out in the solar system. How exactly? And then there is no contact with them for most of the book. What???
-An extra guy goes completely unnoticed in a tiny spacecraft for years??? Seriously??? That's a biggie right there. I mean do you think the Apollo 13 astronauts could have just "overlooked" an extra guy floating around their ship for a few years??? Oh, the humanity!
-The same said guy spends these years addicted to pain killers and living inside A WALL of the spacecraft with a broken leg. Yeah, I'm not kidding.
-They use the word "Warp". I can't even think of a funny comment appropriate enough for that literary cluster.
Usually, I am not a stickler for this sort of stuff as long as the author makes it work. Obviously, using REAL physics is preferable to having a willy-nilly, free for all in space, regarding pretty much everything that has to do with REAL LIFE. However, there is SO much wrong with this book that it is annoying. It would be like someone coming in and writing about what you do for work, but just making up 99% of it and then putting it on the shelves for people to pick up. Then writing a synopsis of the book that pretty much describes what you actually DO, but have the book be nothing at all like that. You would be like, "What the heck? Total falseness. Misrepresentation much?"
I feel like this book has turned me into "that guy" who points out all the things wrong with comic book movies that the rest of us don't notice and just want the movie to be cool as shit. We don't really care about the details as long as the story floats our boat. Does anyone really care that Wolverine doesn't wear a ridiculous yellow suit manufactured in the 80's all the time? Hell no, we just want him to tear the shit out of some bad guys and throw some witty one liners in there. That's why we watch it. "That Guy", comic book guy, sinks your boat as you want to talk about how cool the movie is.
This guy(Smythe, the author if "The Explorer". This rant has gone on for quite some time and you may have forgotten by now.) not only sinks the boat, but first he misleads you into the boat, then he drags you out to the middle of the ocean, where you can call anyone anytime you want but he doesn't let you, teases you with food and water but doesn't let you have any, let's your body degrade down into nothingness, then begins pouring acid over your body, and then makes you drop acid about twice a minute. Then he pokes tiny holes in the boat and lets the water come in really really slowly(this represents how long and frustrating the book is to read), then the boat sinks and you think you are finally going to be eaten by a bunch of sharks, or at least drown, but you just have an aneurysm right there and die before you are two feet under. Disappointing even for the sharks! That's pretty much a description of the emotional journey the book takes you on.
I GET that alot of people don't like or understand movies like "Momento", or "Primer" or other high-concept stuff. I get it, I really do, it's not for everyone. But this book was not only NOT GOOD, it deliberately leads people, that would normally read in this genre, to something that is totally NOT in the genre. It should be in the genre of "80's B-Movie acid trip story-line".
I'm sorry. This is probably the harshest criticism I have ever given for a book. I absolutely CANNOT believe that so many people gave it such high ratings. Did they read the same book I did? The one with the guy floating out in space on a tether? Are they SURE it's the same book. Because right now I am checking the cover of the book I just read and making sure I am reviewing the right book.
(checking book cover art)
Yep, I'm on the right book.
I am shocked I spent this long on a one star review. Hopefully someone read it after they read the book and "likes" the review because they GET the review. Honestly, I would LOVE to have a conversation with ANYONE who gave it a good review and ask them one simple question: WHY???
Total and abject disappointment. It was a good thing I wrote this review right now, because if I would have waited any longer I would have given it "0" stars. I know, you are saying to yourself, "Goodreads doesn't allow a user to give "0" stars for a review", oh but I would make it happen for this book!
Question: Can you permanently delete a book from your Nook?
This is NOT a Troll review either. This is a dead serious review. I am sorry if Mr. Smythe is mad at this review, but seriously. I mean, come on. It doesn't even have an ending.
And that's not a spoiler, that's a warning!
(I have no idea what I am going to do with the sequel I already have downloaded on my Nook.)
February 9, 2016
In all honesty, I skimmed hard the last 90 pages. I just could not take it anymore.
This book had such an interesting premise... that is, on the back cover. Once you finally get into the story, you realize right off the bat that it's something completely different from what the general synopsis is. Sometimes, that works in a book's favor, making for a pleasant surprise, but here, it was frustrating as all hell.
Let me get this out of the way (and note that I'll be putting spoiler tags around it, because if anyone knows of/has seen these movies, they'll guess the real premise fairly quickly):
This novel is a complete rip off of the following films:
AND IT WAS BORING AS F*CK!
I wanted to like this, but really, after the first 10 pages, I was reeling with disappointment, and after 60 goddamn pages, I had already decided to hate it. There was nothing remotely redeemable about what I read afterwards. The Explorer is simply a poorly done re-imagining of other (better!) Sci-Fi thriller films.
This book had such an interesting premise... that is, on the back cover. Once you finally get into the story, you realize right off the bat that it's something completely different from what the general synopsis is. Sometimes, that works in a book's favor, making for a pleasant surprise, but here, it was frustrating as all hell.
Let me get this out of the way (and note that I'll be putting spoiler tags around it, because if anyone knows of/has seen these movies, they'll guess the real premise fairly quickly):
This novel is a complete rip off of the following films:
AND IT WAS BORING AS F*CK!
I wanted to like this, but really, after the first 10 pages, I was reeling with disappointment, and after 60 goddamn pages, I had already decided to hate it. There was nothing remotely redeemable about what I read afterwards. The Explorer is simply a poorly done re-imagining of other (better!) Sci-Fi thriller films.
January 20, 2013
Originally reviewed on Kirkus' Science Fiction & Fantasy Blog
He speaks about things he knows nothing about, inserting the names of galaxies and nebulae and words of description that mean nothing to him, flowery language to somehow offer the punctuation of meaning, to imply knowledge that he doesn’t have. If Emmy were awake she would tell me that I was being narcissistic.
It is the future. For the first time since the era of brave adventurers like Cook and Columbus, Armstrong and Aldrin, humanity once again hungers to explore the vast unknown. A daring mission to boldly go where no one has gone before—into the heart of deepest, darkest space—is a dream made real. Funded entirely by private corporations (not the government interest groups of generations past), the most advanced ship in the history of space travel, named the Ishiguro, is built; a crew of five of the brightest minds are chosen from the most competitive applicant pool in scientific history, plus one other.
Cormac Easton is the last of the team to be selected and the only nonscientific member of Ishiguro’s capable crew. A journalist, Cormac is charged with the task of documenting the ship’s unprecedented journey, filming, interviewing and writing as the Ishiguro makes its way ever further into the dark of uncharted space.
But almost from the very outset of their mission, everything goes wrong. Their captain never makes it out of initial stasis due to a malfunctioning bed. Shortly after, a crew member dies in the cruel vacuum of space, thanks to an undetected tear in her suit. One by one, each member of the crew is picked off by unpredictable accidents until only Cormac remains, rapidly running out of fuel and power, speeding through the void to his solitary death.
But something waits for Cormac in the quiet dark—an anomaly that will impossibly change his fate, and bring him back to the beginning once more.
Smythe’s The Explorer is an odd sort of science-fiction novel. It’s surprisingly sparse when it comes to plot and particulars, which are usually mainstays in the genre—we never really know where the ship is going, or what exactly the ship looks like or what our crew hopes to find.[1] But this is cosmetic stuff—having bad science in science fiction isn’t uncommon, after all. The real oddness of The Explorer lies with the plot—because the mission into deep space, with the crew’s mysterious deaths? That’s not really the story.[2]
The Explorer is in actuality a weirdly passive and poorly conceived outer space version of Groundhog Day.
That’s right. Groundhog Day .
Cormac is the last man standing, and after passing through the anomaly, he finds himself reliving the Ishiguro’s doomed maiden voyage all over again. Unlike Phil Connors, however, Cormac does not wake up inhabiting the same body—in this mission part deux, the battered, broken survivor Cormac (let’s call him Cormac 1) is transported back to the beginning of the timeline, where he has to hide in the walls of the ship from the rest of the crew (including the Other him, let’s call him Cormac 2). And while this sounds cool in theory, this is the main problem with The Explorer: Cormac 1 is so frustratingly passive. Instead of trying to change the fate of the doomed mission, he skulks about the small space shuttle–sized ship undetected (let’s just forget the ludicrousness of this, yes?), narcissistically obsessing about himself, the ladies of his life, his loneliness and his mistakes.[3]
But that’s ok, right? This is a book about ennui and mistakes and regret, and the fear and smallness of one average man confronting the gaping maw of darkness. In that sense, The Explorer succeeds. It is not a bad book; Smythe’s prose is evocative, chock-full of doom and moroseness and impotence. And if you are into a protracted character study of one normal man held captive by fear and fate, then The Explorer just might do it for you.
For me? Not so much.
In Book Smugglerish, an unimpressed 5 spacemen out of 10.
*********
[1] The science is similarly nebulous and misinformed, i.e., the ship "stops" when the acceleration stops, because apparently floating in space is JUST LIKE driving down the street on Earth. It’s not.
[2] In fact, all of this calamity is explained in the book’s first chapter. Seriously.
[3] Because the treatment of female characters in The Explorer? Not my favorite.
He speaks about things he knows nothing about, inserting the names of galaxies and nebulae and words of description that mean nothing to him, flowery language to somehow offer the punctuation of meaning, to imply knowledge that he doesn’t have. If Emmy were awake she would tell me that I was being narcissistic.
It is the future. For the first time since the era of brave adventurers like Cook and Columbus, Armstrong and Aldrin, humanity once again hungers to explore the vast unknown. A daring mission to boldly go where no one has gone before—into the heart of deepest, darkest space—is a dream made real. Funded entirely by private corporations (not the government interest groups of generations past), the most advanced ship in the history of space travel, named the Ishiguro, is built; a crew of five of the brightest minds are chosen from the most competitive applicant pool in scientific history, plus one other.
Cormac Easton is the last of the team to be selected and the only nonscientific member of Ishiguro’s capable crew. A journalist, Cormac is charged with the task of documenting the ship’s unprecedented journey, filming, interviewing and writing as the Ishiguro makes its way ever further into the dark of uncharted space.
But almost from the very outset of their mission, everything goes wrong. Their captain never makes it out of initial stasis due to a malfunctioning bed. Shortly after, a crew member dies in the cruel vacuum of space, thanks to an undetected tear in her suit. One by one, each member of the crew is picked off by unpredictable accidents until only Cormac remains, rapidly running out of fuel and power, speeding through the void to his solitary death.
But something waits for Cormac in the quiet dark—an anomaly that will impossibly change his fate, and bring him back to the beginning once more.
Smythe’s The Explorer is an odd sort of science-fiction novel. It’s surprisingly sparse when it comes to plot and particulars, which are usually mainstays in the genre—we never really know where the ship is going, or what exactly the ship looks like or what our crew hopes to find.[1] But this is cosmetic stuff—having bad science in science fiction isn’t uncommon, after all. The real oddness of The Explorer lies with the plot—because the mission into deep space, with the crew’s mysterious deaths? That’s not really the story.[2]
The Explorer is in actuality a weirdly passive and poorly conceived outer space version of Groundhog Day.
That’s right. Groundhog Day .
Cormac is the last man standing, and after passing through the anomaly, he finds himself reliving the Ishiguro’s doomed maiden voyage all over again. Unlike Phil Connors, however, Cormac does not wake up inhabiting the same body—in this mission part deux, the battered, broken survivor Cormac (let’s call him Cormac 1) is transported back to the beginning of the timeline, where he has to hide in the walls of the ship from the rest of the crew (including the Other him, let’s call him Cormac 2). And while this sounds cool in theory, this is the main problem with The Explorer: Cormac 1 is so frustratingly passive. Instead of trying to change the fate of the doomed mission, he skulks about the small space shuttle–sized ship undetected (let’s just forget the ludicrousness of this, yes?), narcissistically obsessing about himself, the ladies of his life, his loneliness and his mistakes.[3]
But that’s ok, right? This is a book about ennui and mistakes and regret, and the fear and smallness of one average man confronting the gaping maw of darkness. In that sense, The Explorer succeeds. It is not a bad book; Smythe’s prose is evocative, chock-full of doom and moroseness and impotence. And if you are into a protracted character study of one normal man held captive by fear and fate, then The Explorer just might do it for you.
For me? Not so much.
In Book Smugglerish, an unimpressed 5 spacemen out of 10.
*********
[1] The science is similarly nebulous and misinformed, i.e., the ship "stops" when the acceleration stops, because apparently floating in space is JUST LIKE driving down the street on Earth. It’s not.
[2] In fact, all of this calamity is explained in the book’s first chapter. Seriously.
[3] Because the treatment of female characters in The Explorer? Not my favorite.
June 25, 2015
This book just didn't deliver. The book sounds amazing but it didn't impress me. I usually don't read sci-fi thrillers but The Explorer sounded dark and creepy and I loved the cover so I decided to read it.
I really thought that I had found a hidden gem with this book because the plot sounded awesome but I didn't really enjoy the book that much as a whole. There were a few moments where it was exciting and unpredictable but most of it was boring and predictable. It was so hard to concentrate on a lot of the writing because a lot of it was very mundane and unnecessary.
James Smythe didn't do a very good job with this books execution. It had so much potential and if it played out differently, it could have been one of my favourite books. The only thing I will say about the ending is that it was not good and I did not like it. Cormac was an annoying protagonist and I didn't like him. He was a writer but he was so clueless about everything going on around him. I would expect a writer to pay more attention to what was going on.
The writing was okay. Like I said before, some of it was boring and pointless but I do think James Smythe has a lot of potential to be a good author. I don't think I would read another book by James Smythe and I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
I really thought that I had found a hidden gem with this book because the plot sounded awesome but I didn't really enjoy the book that much as a whole. There were a few moments where it was exciting and unpredictable but most of it was boring and predictable. It was so hard to concentrate on a lot of the writing because a lot of it was very mundane and unnecessary.
James Smythe didn't do a very good job with this books execution. It had so much potential and if it played out differently, it could have been one of my favourite books. The only thing I will say about the ending is that it was not good and I did not like it. Cormac was an annoying protagonist and I didn't like him. He was a writer but he was so clueless about everything going on around him. I would expect a writer to pay more attention to what was going on.
The writing was okay. Like I said before, some of it was boring and pointless but I do think James Smythe has a lot of potential to be a good author. I don't think I would read another book by James Smythe and I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
December 21, 2016
Cormac Easton has been selected to be the first journalist in space, sent to document the flight of Ishiguro into deep space. When the crew wakes up from hypersleep they discover their captain died in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. One by one the rest of the crew died and Cormac was left alone; or so he thinks.
This is going to be difficult to review this book without giving spoilers; there are some big reveals within this novel that need to be left unmentioned. For those people that don’t read much Science Fiction don’t let the fact this is set in space put you off. This is literary Sci-Fi, the novel explores humanity. Also for those that think this sounds similar to my recent review of The Martian, they are completely different, while they both have a protagonist isolated in space that is pretty much the only thing they have in common.
I can’t really talk much about the plot, you just have to go out and read it; I want to talk a little about Cormac Easton. Whether you like him or not (I didn’t) there is something I found really interesting about this protagonist. James Smythe shows the reader just how to write an unreliable narrator. You spend most of this book trying to work out if Cormac is leaving things out because he is human and forgot or if it is on purpose, you also question everything he says, what is true and what is a lie. This works really well and I found it added to the tension and thrill of the novel.
Similar to The Martian I can’t help but comparing this to the movie Moon but when you get further into the book you can see some similarities to science fiction movies from the 80’s and 90’s (the one I’m thinking of might be too much of a spoiler). In the world of books, I’m reminded of classic Science Fiction; those books that have so much to say about humanity. I would probably compare Smythe to an author like Robert A. Heinlein; In fact I think I made a similar comparison to classic sci-fi in my review of The Machine.
James Smythe has been a great discovery for me, I love how he explores humanity in his novels. It might be weird but I think both The Machine and The Explorer may end up in my Best of 2013 list. I want to read more books by this author and have in fact started the sequel to this one (The Echo) already. I’m also looking forward to trying his first novel The Testimony and eagerly anticipating his currently untitled book that comes out mid-2014. Smythe seems to be a machine, two books released in 2013 and two being released in 2014, at this rate I’m never going to run out of his books to read.
I hope I didn’t reveal anything important in this novel; it is hard to write a review and say nothing. I also hope I’ve said enough to make people want to read The Explorer (and all of James Smythe’s novels). It is always great when you discover an author that writes the perfect books for your taste and I think I’ve found that here, I will try a few more novels but I feel confident. The Echo is the next book in this series, I believe there will be another two more as well but I felt like this worked well as a standalone novel. Highly recommend both The Explorer and The Machine and hope more people check out this great author.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
This is going to be difficult to review this book without giving spoilers; there are some big reveals within this novel that need to be left unmentioned. For those people that don’t read much Science Fiction don’t let the fact this is set in space put you off. This is literary Sci-Fi, the novel explores humanity. Also for those that think this sounds similar to my recent review of The Martian, they are completely different, while they both have a protagonist isolated in space that is pretty much the only thing they have in common.
I can’t really talk much about the plot, you just have to go out and read it; I want to talk a little about Cormac Easton. Whether you like him or not (I didn’t) there is something I found really interesting about this protagonist. James Smythe shows the reader just how to write an unreliable narrator. You spend most of this book trying to work out if Cormac is leaving things out because he is human and forgot or if it is on purpose, you also question everything he says, what is true and what is a lie. This works really well and I found it added to the tension and thrill of the novel.
Similar to The Martian I can’t help but comparing this to the movie Moon but when you get further into the book you can see some similarities to science fiction movies from the 80’s and 90’s (the one I’m thinking of might be too much of a spoiler). In the world of books, I’m reminded of classic Science Fiction; those books that have so much to say about humanity. I would probably compare Smythe to an author like Robert A. Heinlein; In fact I think I made a similar comparison to classic sci-fi in my review of The Machine.
James Smythe has been a great discovery for me, I love how he explores humanity in his novels. It might be weird but I think both The Machine and The Explorer may end up in my Best of 2013 list. I want to read more books by this author and have in fact started the sequel to this one (The Echo) already. I’m also looking forward to trying his first novel The Testimony and eagerly anticipating his currently untitled book that comes out mid-2014. Smythe seems to be a machine, two books released in 2013 and two being released in 2014, at this rate I’m never going to run out of his books to read.
I hope I didn’t reveal anything important in this novel; it is hard to write a review and say nothing. I also hope I’ve said enough to make people want to read The Explorer (and all of James Smythe’s novels). It is always great when you discover an author that writes the perfect books for your taste and I think I’ve found that here, I will try a few more novels but I feel confident. The Echo is the next book in this series, I believe there will be another two more as well but I felt like this worked well as a standalone novel. Highly recommend both The Explorer and The Machine and hope more people check out this great author.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
December 28, 2017
So it's sort of ok. In the beginning it was enough to hold my attention. But now, not so much. I'm putting it down for now and will pick it up again if I can suspend my dis-belief. Mostly because I keep asking myself all sorts of practical questions. Things that might be considered spoilers, so I'll keep it mild for those who want to read the book. I can always change my review if I finish the book.
You see our "hero" is a reporter, on board to record this momentous historic trip. And then things start to go wrong. And I can't help but ask myself, if he had to go into training with all the other astronauts, why is he as useful as a hammer to a screw? Seriously. The only thing he knows is how to do is how to check the power levels and feed himself. What is wrong with this picture? You would think his training would be a little more advanced. And that's where I will stop. Because to say more will spoil things, and I only read about 10% of the book.
I'm not sure why it has so many high ratings, I can only guess that the people who read this are first time readers of sci-fi, they turned off their brains, or the story suddenly made sense at the end.
You see our "hero" is a reporter, on board to record this momentous historic trip. And then things start to go wrong. And I can't help but ask myself, if he had to go into training with all the other astronauts, why is he as useful as a hammer to a screw? Seriously. The only thing he knows is how to do is how to check the power levels and feed himself. What is wrong with this picture? You would think his training would be a little more advanced. And that's where I will stop. Because to say more will spoil things, and I only read about 10% of the book.
I'm not sure why it has so many high ratings, I can only guess that the people who read this are first time readers of sci-fi, they turned off their brains, or the story suddenly made sense at the end.
February 4, 2014
Why are some books so hard to rate? I can't even decide if this is a two or a four, so I'll settle on three instead.
Also, it's impossible to actually review this book without giving away a major twist (and it's of the kind one really shouldn't know about beforehand). Even saying there's a major twist is giving stuff away, but then, I spent the first part of the book actively wondering if what was going on was all that there would be or if something - anything - would actually, like, happen, so knowing that something did, indeed, change, might have made me read on faster, to start with.
The Explorer isn't a particularly adventurous book (by which I mean a book filled with exciting adventure). Neither is it rich in action. It's pretty much all psychological suspense (or somewhat-suspense, I guess, as I kept dozing off and being a bit bored whenever I picked it up again). It's all about people, specifically Cormac, our protagonist and narrator, a journalist who's been chosen to go up into an "inspiring" trip to outer space, further than humanity ever has before.
There are other people too, whom we see through Cormac's eyes. Unfortunately, while we eventually learn a bit more about them, they all remained a bit too flat for me - and yes, I realise this entire book is fully Cormac's story, but even so. I admit that while a part of me wanted to keep reading, wanted to find out just wtf was going on, another part of me was somewhat bored.
Also, I do have to admit I wasn't really satisfied by the ending. It's the first book in a series, so perhaps there's something more satisfying on the way, but .. yeah. Maybe I just crave more excitement.
There was a lot to appreciate about this book, though, and I'm glad I read it.
Also, it's impossible to actually review this book without giving away a major twist (and it's of the kind one really shouldn't know about beforehand). Even saying there's a major twist is giving stuff away, but then, I spent the first part of the book actively wondering if what was going on was all that there would be or if something - anything - would actually, like, happen, so knowing that something did, indeed, change, might have made me read on faster, to start with.
The Explorer isn't a particularly adventurous book (by which I mean a book filled with exciting adventure). Neither is it rich in action. It's pretty much all psychological suspense (or somewhat-suspense, I guess, as I kept dozing off and being a bit bored whenever I picked it up again). It's all about people, specifically Cormac, our protagonist and narrator, a journalist who's been chosen to go up into an "inspiring" trip to outer space, further than humanity ever has before.
There are other people too, whom we see through Cormac's eyes. Unfortunately, while we eventually learn a bit more about them, they all remained a bit too flat for me - and yes, I realise this entire book is fully Cormac's story, but even so. I admit that while a part of me wanted to keep reading, wanted to find out just wtf was going on, another part of me was somewhat bored.
Also, I do have to admit I wasn't really satisfied by the ending. It's the first book in a series, so perhaps there's something more satisfying on the way, but .. yeah. Maybe I just crave more excitement.
There was a lot to appreciate about this book, though, and I'm glad I read it.
December 21, 2012
The Explorer is a decent enough read. It has one major idea, and the whole plot hinges about it. Fortunately it's a great idea, not wholly original, but well-executed, for the most part.
In the spirit of my ongoing half stars, I think I would actually go for two and a half stars, raised to three because the writing is good, and thus the book is very readable. The plot, for all its potential complexity, is actually conveyed in a fairly straight-forward fashion, and given the fallibility of the narrator, this is a credit to the author.
However, I found it a quite unsatisfactory and un-immersing read for a few reasons. Now science fiction is allowed various conceits, but it is set in our own universe, so some basics remain. If somebody jumped from a third floor window and didn't break their legs, or some similar injury, we would question it. And the science bugged me, not niggling high-level science, but basic things.
The button that 'stops' the ship... The author does mention that of course the ship is still travelling forward, and yet they refer to the ship as being still, it's terminology, but it bothered me. And when they 'stop' the ship their gravity turns on, but when they start the engines again, the gravity turns off. Apart from the fact the engines are on and the ship is accelerating so there would be the feeling of gravity towards the rear of the ship, there is a separate button for the gravity, it's mentioned, so why would it also be slaved to the button that stops and starts the engines? It's impractical and it bothered me as I read it, it took me out of the story.
Later on, as I was growing to accept this idiosyncrasy, he mentions that when they stop the engines they have retro rockets to slow the ship a little, because otherwise the ship would have so much momentum the astronauts wouldn't be able to venture outside. Wouldn't the astronauts have the same forward momentum as the ship, if it is no longer accelerating?
(And I may be wrong on this, but wouldn't firing retro thrusters also cause the crew to be flung towards the front of the ship?)
They also have to wait for the hull to cool down before they venture outside (on a space walk), because of the massive speed. Why is the hull hot? They're in space, there is no friction.
That may all seem nit-picky, but things like this threw me out of the the story.
The ship has artificial gravity technology, yet they need special pods to protect them from the acceleration the ship uses to break free from the Earth's atmosphere, which would otherwise kill them. If you have artificial gravity can't they counter those forces using that? OK, that one might be a little too nit-picky, and it probably wouldn't have bothered me if it weren't for all the others...
Most of the back story, the characterisation of the main character, sown throughout the book so that we learn about him as we learn about the story, feels like filler. It just isn't as interesting as the main story. That's probably a little harsh, actually, it does do a good job of fleshing out the main character, but for me it didn't feel entirely necessary to the story.
So the result, for me, is what feels like it could have been a great sci-fi short story or novella,
if an editor had questioned some of the science a little more, pumped up into a novel.
The ending's alright. There's no grand revelation, (there is a kind of revelation, but it's kind of obvious), but then I don't think it's a grand revelation kind of book, it has its one big idea early on and kind of coasts from there (which isn't the criticism it may sound like, as I said at the beginning, the idea itself is very well played out.) I do think the ending was a missed opportunity though, there was a final inch waiting there to be teased out of the idea and, honestly, I think the author missed it.
In the spirit of my ongoing half stars, I think I would actually go for two and a half stars, raised to three because the writing is good, and thus the book is very readable. The plot, for all its potential complexity, is actually conveyed in a fairly straight-forward fashion, and given the fallibility of the narrator, this is a credit to the author.
However, I found it a quite unsatisfactory and un-immersing read for a few reasons. Now science fiction is allowed various conceits, but it is set in our own universe, so some basics remain. If somebody jumped from a third floor window and didn't break their legs, or some similar injury, we would question it. And the science bugged me, not niggling high-level science, but basic things.
The button that 'stops' the ship... The author does mention that of course the ship is still travelling forward, and yet they refer to the ship as being still, it's terminology, but it bothered me. And when they 'stop' the ship their gravity turns on, but when they start the engines again, the gravity turns off. Apart from the fact the engines are on and the ship is accelerating so there would be the feeling of gravity towards the rear of the ship, there is a separate button for the gravity, it's mentioned, so why would it also be slaved to the button that stops and starts the engines? It's impractical and it bothered me as I read it, it took me out of the story.
Later on, as I was growing to accept this idiosyncrasy, he mentions that when they stop the engines they have retro rockets to slow the ship a little, because otherwise the ship would have so much momentum the astronauts wouldn't be able to venture outside. Wouldn't the astronauts have the same forward momentum as the ship, if it is no longer accelerating?
(And I may be wrong on this, but wouldn't firing retro thrusters also cause the crew to be flung towards the front of the ship?)
They also have to wait for the hull to cool down before they venture outside (on a space walk), because of the massive speed. Why is the hull hot? They're in space, there is no friction.
That may all seem nit-picky, but things like this threw me out of the the story.
The ship has artificial gravity technology, yet they need special pods to protect them from the acceleration the ship uses to break free from the Earth's atmosphere, which would otherwise kill them. If you have artificial gravity can't they counter those forces using that? OK, that one might be a little too nit-picky, and it probably wouldn't have bothered me if it weren't for all the others...
Most of the back story, the characterisation of the main character, sown throughout the book so that we learn about him as we learn about the story, feels like filler. It just isn't as interesting as the main story. That's probably a little harsh, actually, it does do a good job of fleshing out the main character, but for me it didn't feel entirely necessary to the story.
So the result, for me, is what feels like it could have been a great sci-fi short story or novella,
if an editor had questioned some of the science a little more, pumped up into a novel.
The ending's alright. There's no grand revelation, (there is a kind of revelation, but it's kind of obvious), but then I don't think it's a grand revelation kind of book, it has its one big idea early on and kind of coasts from there (which isn't the criticism it may sound like, as I said at the beginning, the idea itself is very well played out.) I do think the ending was a missed opportunity though, there was a final inch waiting there to be teased out of the idea and, honestly, I think the author missed it.
January 22, 2013
1.5 stars.
I bought into the hype of this book being a smart, scary, science fiction thriller. Too bad it's neither smart, scary or thrilling. And the science isn't very good either. No qualms about the fiction part though. It sure is a ... story.
Other reviews (see Tor.com for instance) have revealed the main plot point so I won't bother dancing around it here: it's Groundhog Day in space. There, now you know. That gets revealed about 20% of the way into the book anyway, so i don't get why some people seem to think it needs to be kept secret like a twist or something.
The difference from Groundhog Day though, is that the main character doesn't find himself back in his body the next time around, rather he's duplicated. So he's relegated to being an observer... and that's the rest of the book. He hides in the hull and vent shafts of the ship and watches everything happen for THE REST OF THE BOOK. Granted he finds out a few things that he wasn't privy to the first time, but he doesn't do anything else. It's in literally the last 2 pages of the book that he tries to change events.
There is one good reveal in the flashback scenes regarding the main character's wife, but that was the only part of the book that surprised me. There is no other big twist, revelation, or anything else to the story. It's achingly dull reading about the time-warped version of the character just sitting and watching the original version go about things for a whole novel.
The main flaw of this book though, is the shoddy science. It's blindingly clear that James Smythe doesn't know a jot about physics beyond watching sci-fi movies. He's inconsistent about lots of things. One good example is that in one scene, a transmission to earth is lagged because they're several light-minutes away. Then in a later scene, when the ship is even further away, one character has a furtive conversation with ground control with NO LAG WHATSOEVER. Smythe, you need to pick one form of communication: C or faster-than-C. Other inconsistencies and mistakes in the physics of the book have been nitpicked in other reviews, such as this one: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Go ahead and read some of the other lower-star-rating reviews here and see why this book really isn't worth it, despite all the hype lately.
I bought into the hype of this book being a smart, scary, science fiction thriller. Too bad it's neither smart, scary or thrilling. And the science isn't very good either. No qualms about the fiction part though. It sure is a ... story.
Other reviews (see Tor.com for instance) have revealed the main plot point so I won't bother dancing around it here: it's Groundhog Day in space. There, now you know. That gets revealed about 20% of the way into the book anyway, so i don't get why some people seem to think it needs to be kept secret like a twist or something.
The difference from Groundhog Day though, is that the main character doesn't find himself back in his body the next time around, rather he's duplicated. So he's relegated to being an observer... and that's the rest of the book. He hides in the hull and vent shafts of the ship and watches everything happen for THE REST OF THE BOOK. Granted he finds out a few things that he wasn't privy to the first time, but he doesn't do anything else. It's in literally the last 2 pages of the book that he tries to change events.
There is one good reveal in the flashback scenes regarding the main character's wife, but that was the only part of the book that surprised me. There is no other big twist, revelation, or anything else to the story. It's achingly dull reading about the time-warped version of the character just sitting and watching the original version go about things for a whole novel.
The main flaw of this book though, is the shoddy science. It's blindingly clear that James Smythe doesn't know a jot about physics beyond watching sci-fi movies. He's inconsistent about lots of things. One good example is that in one scene, a transmission to earth is lagged because they're several light-minutes away. Then in a later scene, when the ship is even further away, one character has a furtive conversation with ground control with NO LAG WHATSOEVER. Smythe, you need to pick one form of communication: C or faster-than-C. Other inconsistencies and mistakes in the physics of the book have been nitpicked in other reviews, such as this one: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Go ahead and read some of the other lower-star-rating reviews here and see why this book really isn't worth it, despite all the hype lately.
April 6, 2015
I’ve been vaguely meaning to read something by Smythe for a while. This doesn’t really encourage me: the idea is interesting enough, but my interest waned from the very first chapter, because the narration is so flat and lacking in affect. I couldn’t care less about Cormac (or indeed, the rest of the crew), and the science was inconsistent enough that it didn’t capture my attention as a novel of ideas, either. (I mean, be clear: are you or are you not breaking Newton’s laws of the conservation of motion? If yes, why?)
It seemed… just rather too similar to various other books and sci-fi films that are around, without giving me anything that made it stand out. Which is a disappointment given that this book has been vaguely on my radar for a while, but not too surprising when I look at the reviews on Goodreads and such. Ah, well.
Originally posted here.
It seemed… just rather too similar to various other books and sci-fi films that are around, without giving me anything that made it stand out. Which is a disappointment given that this book has been vaguely on my radar for a while, but not too surprising when I look at the reviews on Goodreads and such. Ah, well.
Originally posted here.
January 9, 2018
The Explorer isn't published until January next year and so a review will follow on FWN closer to the time, but James Smythe has surprised me. The Testimony is one of my favourite books of 2012 and yet here he has done something completely different - although still with the same powerful atmospheric oomph - but it is every bit as good. This time, though, we are in Space and it's at its most claustrophobic and dark. Incidentally, what a fantastic cover.
April 25, 2022
Labs īss sci-fi. Šis tas pārsteidza, taču lielākā daļa paredzama. Bet bija pietiekami interesanti, lai turpinātu cerībā, ka varbūt atkal kas negaidīts notiks.
January 28, 2013
The Explorer by James Smythe
When journalist Cormac Easton is selected to document the first manned mission into deep space, he dreams of securing his place in history as one of humanity’s great explorers.
But in space, nothing goes according to plan.
The crew wake from hypersleep to discover their captain dead in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue.
If you’re expecting aliens and distant worlds, I’ll warn you now that you’ll be disappointed with this. The Explorer is a novel set as close to our reality as Sci-Fi will allow. So no aliens I’m afraid; but there is time travel, death and Big Macs in space.
Cormac Easton is a journalist sent into space with five other space cadets to go further than anybody has travelled before, when a series of unfortunate events robs Cormac of his crew, he finds himself alone and adrift with no plausible way of making it home. I’m not ruining anything here for you here, as all the death occurs within the first few pages. I’ve not revealed any spoilers, so read on. Besides death is an important plot device throughout the narrative of The Explorer, so make sure you pay attention as the mortal coils are shuffled on by one.
With his crew gone and facing an uncertain, though probably certain doom of becoming a one-man island; Cormac, by way of an anomaly of space is flung through a quirk of time, finding himself at the beginning of the mission, hiding in his own ship from his own crew and himself as some sort of living ghost. He hides away in the vents, nooks and crannies, spying upon the crew, Big Brother style, watching as events unfold the second time round, this time spotting everything he missed. Through this voyeurism, Cormac begins to piece together where the mission and his entire life went wrong. Should he interfere and try to avert the inevitable? Or should he lay back and let events unfold as death is inevitable for us all? Smythe plays with this device in the most devious means.
There are some deep messages in this. The main theme is whether or not it’s right within one self to seek higher glories at the cost of what we love. Should we venture into the unknown limelight to better ourselves, or should we forsake our dreams for a simple existence? It also touches on the curse of love, strained friendships and what it means to be human. We crawled out of the slime for this, and we’ve been keen to distance ourselves from the primordial soup ever since. We are human, we will venture.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Explorer, it being a page tuner as you hunger to discover the next secret. Even though it seems Smythe reveals all his cards at the beginning by killing almost of the main characters, he ingeniously offers us a sleight of hand by holding back on details, revelling in what evolves into a quasi whodunit in zero gravity.
There are hints of Kurt Vonnegut’s temporal dislocation as used in Slaughterhouse 5 and J G Ballard’s deconstruction of society and human loneliness as explored in Concrete Island and Galapagos. Smythe is overly keen to exploit a filmic value throughout and even self-referentially alludes to such probable scenes during the course of the story. If you enjoyed Moon and Looper and prefer your Sci-Fi more thoughtful instead of laser guns and Xenomorphs then I implore you to lose yourself in The Explorer.
5/5
When journalist Cormac Easton is selected to document the first manned mission into deep space, he dreams of securing his place in history as one of humanity’s great explorers.
But in space, nothing goes according to plan.
The crew wake from hypersleep to discover their captain dead in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue.
If you’re expecting aliens and distant worlds, I’ll warn you now that you’ll be disappointed with this. The Explorer is a novel set as close to our reality as Sci-Fi will allow. So no aliens I’m afraid; but there is time travel, death and Big Macs in space.
Cormac Easton is a journalist sent into space with five other space cadets to go further than anybody has travelled before, when a series of unfortunate events robs Cormac of his crew, he finds himself alone and adrift with no plausible way of making it home. I’m not ruining anything here for you here, as all the death occurs within the first few pages. I’ve not revealed any spoilers, so read on. Besides death is an important plot device throughout the narrative of The Explorer, so make sure you pay attention as the mortal coils are shuffled on by one.
With his crew gone and facing an uncertain, though probably certain doom of becoming a one-man island; Cormac, by way of an anomaly of space is flung through a quirk of time, finding himself at the beginning of the mission, hiding in his own ship from his own crew and himself as some sort of living ghost. He hides away in the vents, nooks and crannies, spying upon the crew, Big Brother style, watching as events unfold the second time round, this time spotting everything he missed. Through this voyeurism, Cormac begins to piece together where the mission and his entire life went wrong. Should he interfere and try to avert the inevitable? Or should he lay back and let events unfold as death is inevitable for us all? Smythe plays with this device in the most devious means.
There are some deep messages in this. The main theme is whether or not it’s right within one self to seek higher glories at the cost of what we love. Should we venture into the unknown limelight to better ourselves, or should we forsake our dreams for a simple existence? It also touches on the curse of love, strained friendships and what it means to be human. We crawled out of the slime for this, and we’ve been keen to distance ourselves from the primordial soup ever since. We are human, we will venture.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Explorer, it being a page tuner as you hunger to discover the next secret. Even though it seems Smythe reveals all his cards at the beginning by killing almost of the main characters, he ingeniously offers us a sleight of hand by holding back on details, revelling in what evolves into a quasi whodunit in zero gravity.
There are hints of Kurt Vonnegut’s temporal dislocation as used in Slaughterhouse 5 and J G Ballard’s deconstruction of society and human loneliness as explored in Concrete Island and Galapagos. Smythe is overly keen to exploit a filmic value throughout and even self-referentially alludes to such probable scenes during the course of the story. If you enjoyed Moon and Looper and prefer your Sci-Fi more thoughtful instead of laser guns and Xenomorphs then I implore you to lose yourself in The Explorer.
5/5
January 11, 2013
Reviewed for SF Signal
REVIEW SUMMARY: This book keeps you engaged and interested from page one.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A journalist joins a team of astronauts on an expedition to the farthest point in space humans have ever traveled. The mystery that awaits is more dangerous than trying to reach it alone.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Fascinating story; empathetic and beautiful struggle of an explorer separated from his family; epic, outer space anomaly leaves the reader burning for more
CONS: The mystery is not completely resolved.
BOTTOM LINE: The Explorer earns a “can’t miss” recommendation for its mind-bending, heart-wrenching, avalanche of a reading experience.
The Explorer is an oasis for readers thirsty to find an engaging book. Reading this story puts you in space, suspended from the back of a space ship, outside the bounds of Earth’s rescue, and watching the cord sever that will cast you off to an obscure death where even the stars don’t shine. This is the type of thrill The Explorer uses to propel the reader right from the first line. Check out this first sentence:
One of the first things I did when I realized that I was never going to make it home—when I was the only crewmember left, all the others stuffed into their sleeping chambers like rigid, vacuum-packed action figures—was to write up a list of everybody I would never see again; let me wallow in it, swim around in missing them as much as I could.
After reading that, I thought, “How is he going to write a book after revealing that? What else is there?”
Wow, what else is there, indeed. Not only does it start with a major reveal, but there is another about 15% in that kicks the first part of the book into high gear. Not spoiling that reveal limits how much plot can be discussed, but not The Explorer‘s emotionally impacting elements which combines humanity’s innate desire to explore with the consequences doing so can have on one’s family. The main character, Cormac, has left his wife on Earth while he joins a team of astronauts on a journey farther than anyone else has ever been. His once-in-a-lifetime adventure illustrates life’s daily struggle to balance family above all else and life dreams, too. In this moral dilemma, Cormac’s story is a home run.
The book has a tight plot. I had some questions at the end, but they only marginally take away from what was a thrilling and engaging read. Not all stories require all questions to be answered, and the author did reveal on his blog that he’s written the sequel, hinting that all will be resolved after the story expands. The focus of The Explorer is showing how the mystery affects Cormac, his wife, and the crew, in an emotionally impacting display of the suffering people will put themselves through to find peace.
Books like this are the kind that create fans, and I’m proud to be one.
REVIEW SUMMARY: This book keeps you engaged and interested from page one.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A journalist joins a team of astronauts on an expedition to the farthest point in space humans have ever traveled. The mystery that awaits is more dangerous than trying to reach it alone.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Fascinating story; empathetic and beautiful struggle of an explorer separated from his family; epic, outer space anomaly leaves the reader burning for more
CONS: The mystery is not completely resolved.
BOTTOM LINE: The Explorer earns a “can’t miss” recommendation for its mind-bending, heart-wrenching, avalanche of a reading experience.
The Explorer is an oasis for readers thirsty to find an engaging book. Reading this story puts you in space, suspended from the back of a space ship, outside the bounds of Earth’s rescue, and watching the cord sever that will cast you off to an obscure death where even the stars don’t shine. This is the type of thrill The Explorer uses to propel the reader right from the first line. Check out this first sentence:
One of the first things I did when I realized that I was never going to make it home—when I was the only crewmember left, all the others stuffed into their sleeping chambers like rigid, vacuum-packed action figures—was to write up a list of everybody I would never see again; let me wallow in it, swim around in missing them as much as I could.
After reading that, I thought, “How is he going to write a book after revealing that? What else is there?”
Wow, what else is there, indeed. Not only does it start with a major reveal, but there is another about 15% in that kicks the first part of the book into high gear. Not spoiling that reveal limits how much plot can be discussed, but not The Explorer‘s emotionally impacting elements which combines humanity’s innate desire to explore with the consequences doing so can have on one’s family. The main character, Cormac, has left his wife on Earth while he joins a team of astronauts on a journey farther than anyone else has ever been. His once-in-a-lifetime adventure illustrates life’s daily struggle to balance family above all else and life dreams, too. In this moral dilemma, Cormac’s story is a home run.
The book has a tight plot. I had some questions at the end, but they only marginally take away from what was a thrilling and engaging read. Not all stories require all questions to be answered, and the author did reveal on his blog that he’s written the sequel, hinting that all will be resolved after the story expands. The focus of The Explorer is showing how the mystery affects Cormac, his wife, and the crew, in an emotionally impacting display of the suffering people will put themselves through to find peace.
Books like this are the kind that create fans, and I’m proud to be one.
October 8, 2012
Cormac Easton is a journalist. A journalist left on a space-ship where his crew has died; all alone, contemplating the end. What happened isn’t really the question, they died in mundane ways, things that happen in space. In a vacuum.
First off, I absolutely loved this book, gripping and clever; it kept me up reading late into the night. Set in the not too distant future, the technology is on the edge of possibility. The spaceship setting has an eerie, claustrophobic feel. For as much as space is fascinating and beautiful, it’s pretty scary place even without the threat of aliens or anything the mind can fabricate. It doesn’t take much for something to go wrong and be life threatening.
James Smythe manages to combine a first person narrative with third at the same time. That might not make sense now, but I don’t want to reveal a spoiler for the second act. This removes some of the limitations of first person whereby things not in Cormac’s knowledge are revealed to the reader and to Cormac. Going forward, the novel is full of things that don’t quite make sense at the start. It’s the stuff of nightmares that a few days without brushing your teeth will make them loose! I read on (whilst trying not to poke my teeth) and patience was rewarded. And isn’t just a nice feeling when you have that ahhh moment?
Back on earth, flashbacks start to patch together the events that brought Cormac to the mission and his relationship with his wife. Elena came across as a bit needy and over-reactive at the start, but as the information is drip fed, you begin to realise why she was the way she was. Hindsight is all very good when he’s floating around in a doomed spaceship but most of us would be overjoyed that a loved one had a chance to do something so amazing. However is all leads up to another moment of realisation.
The politics of space travel are also touched on. Gone are the days of the space race where millions of dollars were thrown at space exploration. It is expensive and dangerous and there are justifications for the Ishiguro’s mission, even in an age where it’s not considered that important. Also raised are questions about private sector funding and implications.
The minutiae of space living is either going to be fascinating or tiresome, depending on if you’re interested in space travel. There’s not a lot to do in space after all. I enjoyed the descriptions of the day-to-day on-board the Ishiguro. Even if it’s not your thing, still give the book a chance, the writing and plot will carry you through.
Finally, there are some lovely writerly little touches; comments about tense and a wonderful passage approaching the end, contemplating the act of finishing reading an ebook.
First off, I absolutely loved this book, gripping and clever; it kept me up reading late into the night. Set in the not too distant future, the technology is on the edge of possibility. The spaceship setting has an eerie, claustrophobic feel. For as much as space is fascinating and beautiful, it’s pretty scary place even without the threat of aliens or anything the mind can fabricate. It doesn’t take much for something to go wrong and be life threatening.
James Smythe manages to combine a first person narrative with third at the same time. That might not make sense now, but I don’t want to reveal a spoiler for the second act. This removes some of the limitations of first person whereby things not in Cormac’s knowledge are revealed to the reader and to Cormac. Going forward, the novel is full of things that don’t quite make sense at the start. It’s the stuff of nightmares that a few days without brushing your teeth will make them loose! I read on (whilst trying not to poke my teeth) and patience was rewarded. And isn’t just a nice feeling when you have that ahhh moment?
Back on earth, flashbacks start to patch together the events that brought Cormac to the mission and his relationship with his wife. Elena came across as a bit needy and over-reactive at the start, but as the information is drip fed, you begin to realise why she was the way she was. Hindsight is all very good when he’s floating around in a doomed spaceship but most of us would be overjoyed that a loved one had a chance to do something so amazing. However is all leads up to another moment of realisation.
The politics of space travel are also touched on. Gone are the days of the space race where millions of dollars were thrown at space exploration. It is expensive and dangerous and there are justifications for the Ishiguro’s mission, even in an age where it’s not considered that important. Also raised are questions about private sector funding and implications.
The minutiae of space living is either going to be fascinating or tiresome, depending on if you’re interested in space travel. There’s not a lot to do in space after all. I enjoyed the descriptions of the day-to-day on-board the Ishiguro. Even if it’s not your thing, still give the book a chance, the writing and plot will carry you through.
Finally, there are some lovely writerly little touches; comments about tense and a wonderful passage approaching the end, contemplating the act of finishing reading an ebook.
January 16, 2013
You may also read my review here: http://www.mybookishways.com/2013/01/...
When the chance of a lifetime to travel to outer space presents itself to journalist Cormac Easton, he jumps at it, even if it’s to the detriment of his marriage. After all, it’s not every day that you get to travel to space, and he figures things will work out once he returns home. There’s only one problem. His entire crew (with the exception of one woman) is dead, leaving him alone in the ship. When the book starts, Cormac begins to slowly list the ways the crew dies. Some are unusual deaths, and some are more mundane, such as a heart attack, but one thing is sure: Cormac has no idea how he’s going to get home, since his fuel level is descending rapidly, and the ship didn’t turn around at the halfway point like it was supposed to. So, Cormac makes a terrible choice, and finds out things are absolutely not what they seem.
The vastness of space has always been fascinating, and terrifying, to me. In fact, while there are tons of folks that would love to travel to outer space, I’m not one of them, so The Explorer held a sort of morbid fascination for me. As I read the narrative, the specter of the cold, black nothing outside of the ship was always hanging over the events unfolding inside, and Cormac’s realization that he may never get home builds slowly, and excruciatingly (in a good way.) The Explorer reads like a diary, and through Cormac, we get to know each of his fellow crew members, first with Cormac as part of the action, then with Cormac as an outside observer of the events leading up to him being the only one left, hurtling through space. I don’t want to reveal exactly what happens, because that would spoil part of the book, but more than a thriller, and a sci-fi novel, The Explorer is a character study of a man that is full of heartbreak and regret, and what his actions have led to, not only for him, but for those around him. He is falling apart in body and mind, and what he observes among the crew is not only shocking, but leads him to question everything about this once in a lifetime trip that was supposed to make them famous the world over and unite the human race. Or so they thought.
The Explorer is one of the most exciting, creepy, and heartbreaking novels that I’ve read in a long time. Part sci-fi thriller, part mystery, with a liberal sprinkling of horror, and a fast pace that will keep you racing through the pages, this one is un-missable, and I expect it to land on a ton of Best of 2013 lists, including mine. The author leaves a few questions at the end, but in this case, it’s a good thing, and I wasn’t left wanting. Let’s just say that after reading this, I won’t be getting me on a spaceship anytime soon. Don’t miss this one!
When the chance of a lifetime to travel to outer space presents itself to journalist Cormac Easton, he jumps at it, even if it’s to the detriment of his marriage. After all, it’s not every day that you get to travel to space, and he figures things will work out once he returns home. There’s only one problem. His entire crew (with the exception of one woman) is dead, leaving him alone in the ship. When the book starts, Cormac begins to slowly list the ways the crew dies. Some are unusual deaths, and some are more mundane, such as a heart attack, but one thing is sure: Cormac has no idea how he’s going to get home, since his fuel level is descending rapidly, and the ship didn’t turn around at the halfway point like it was supposed to. So, Cormac makes a terrible choice, and finds out things are absolutely not what they seem.
The vastness of space has always been fascinating, and terrifying, to me. In fact, while there are tons of folks that would love to travel to outer space, I’m not one of them, so The Explorer held a sort of morbid fascination for me. As I read the narrative, the specter of the cold, black nothing outside of the ship was always hanging over the events unfolding inside, and Cormac’s realization that he may never get home builds slowly, and excruciatingly (in a good way.) The Explorer reads like a diary, and through Cormac, we get to know each of his fellow crew members, first with Cormac as part of the action, then with Cormac as an outside observer of the events leading up to him being the only one left, hurtling through space. I don’t want to reveal exactly what happens, because that would spoil part of the book, but more than a thriller, and a sci-fi novel, The Explorer is a character study of a man that is full of heartbreak and regret, and what his actions have led to, not only for him, but for those around him. He is falling apart in body and mind, and what he observes among the crew is not only shocking, but leads him to question everything about this once in a lifetime trip that was supposed to make them famous the world over and unite the human race. Or so they thought.
The Explorer is one of the most exciting, creepy, and heartbreaking novels that I’ve read in a long time. Part sci-fi thriller, part mystery, with a liberal sprinkling of horror, and a fast pace that will keep you racing through the pages, this one is un-missable, and I expect it to land on a ton of Best of 2013 lists, including mine. The author leaves a few questions at the end, but in this case, it’s a good thing, and I wasn’t left wanting. Let’s just say that after reading this, I won’t be getting me on a spaceship anytime soon. Don’t miss this one!
May 17, 2014
264 pages - it could be much shorter.
No exploring takes place in this book. I was hoping for some interstellar space travel where the character would get to explore lots of amazing things, but it seems the ship didn’t even make it out of the Solar System.
There was no logic to the story. A group of carefully selected astronauts (and a journalist) were sent into deep space to look at nothing. The idea of the mission being that they wanted deep space to be seen from human eyes seems like a poor justification for what must have been an expensive project.
For some reason the main character (Cormac) becomes a duplicate of himself and has to watch the events of the mission unfold around him. I don’t think the author provided any explanation of why this happened. I was also confused about why they went into hyper-sleep when they were not going very far in space terms. In fact they were out of hyper-sleep before the ship left the Earth – Moon orbit.
The ship uses up 49% of its fuel and fails to turn around and take them back to Earth. Not one of the astronauts knows how to fix it, even though they can turn the engines off and have the ship come to a standstill (yes in the vacuum of space turning off the engines causes the ship to stop!!!!). The crew also go outside the ship and climb around the hull for some reason. One of them sabotages some wires and this, apparently, stops the ship from turning around and taking them back home. The said crewman then has a heart attack and dies and the rest are left to figure out how to fix things. At this point I started to think all the characters were stupid.
Cormac is not interesting and has some tired old back story to tell about his wife not wanting him to go on the mission….Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. He ends up breaking his leg and becomes addicted to pain killers and lives inside the walls (or the lining) of the ship to avoid being seen by the rest of the crew.
Other reviewers claim there is a twist but I saw no twist, only an unexplained and random plot device that made the story read like many other time loop stories (Triangle, Groundhog Day, Source Code, Primer).
Duplicated information came at the reader. The novel was broken into three parts but for what reason I could not say.
It wasn’t clever or original.
No exploring takes place in this book. I was hoping for some interstellar space travel where the character would get to explore lots of amazing things, but it seems the ship didn’t even make it out of the Solar System.
There was no logic to the story. A group of carefully selected astronauts (and a journalist) were sent into deep space to look at nothing. The idea of the mission being that they wanted deep space to be seen from human eyes seems like a poor justification for what must have been an expensive project.
For some reason the main character (Cormac) becomes a duplicate of himself and has to watch the events of the mission unfold around him. I don’t think the author provided any explanation of why this happened. I was also confused about why they went into hyper-sleep when they were not going very far in space terms. In fact they were out of hyper-sleep before the ship left the Earth – Moon orbit.
The ship uses up 49% of its fuel and fails to turn around and take them back to Earth. Not one of the astronauts knows how to fix it, even though they can turn the engines off and have the ship come to a standstill (yes in the vacuum of space turning off the engines causes the ship to stop!!!!). The crew also go outside the ship and climb around the hull for some reason. One of them sabotages some wires and this, apparently, stops the ship from turning around and taking them back home. The said crewman then has a heart attack and dies and the rest are left to figure out how to fix things. At this point I started to think all the characters were stupid.
Cormac is not interesting and has some tired old back story to tell about his wife not wanting him to go on the mission….Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. He ends up breaking his leg and becomes addicted to pain killers and lives inside the walls (or the lining) of the ship to avoid being seen by the rest of the crew.
Other reviewers claim there is a twist but I saw no twist, only an unexplained and random plot device that made the story read like many other time loop stories (Triangle, Groundhog Day, Source Code, Primer).
Duplicated information came at the reader. The novel was broken into three parts but for what reason I could not say.
It wasn’t clever or original.
December 16, 2012
Scary or suspenseful stories that take place on spaceships freak me out a lot. For me, the setting is claustrophobic and alien and just generally makes my skin crawl. But I'm always drawn to them and always have to watch the show or read the book. This one was well worth my small anxieties.
This story is more suspenseful than scary. The mission for the people on this ship is to travel the farthest any human ever has and then turn around and travel back to earth. Cormac Easton is the ship's journalist. He is observing and writing about the mission for the folks back home. But the mission is far from successful. First they find the captain dead in his hypersleep chamber upon waking. Then the crew, one after another, die, all in different ways, until Cormac is the last man standing. And once he realizes the ship does not turn around towards home like it's automatically supposed to, Cormac knows he is doomed.
All that I've got up here is tranquility now, I suppose.
That's just the first quarter of the book. I'm not going to give away the rest of the story other than it includes flashbacks to the months and weeks leading up to the mission. During these flashbacks we learn more about the crew and Cormac's relationship with his wife. These flashbacks are revealing and important to what is happening on the ship. And what's happening on the ship is enthralling. The reveal is slow going, but never boring. It's dark and beautifully written.
That was how it was sold: a voyage to rival Columbus, to rival the stories of Jules Verne.
ARC provided through Edelweiss
This story is more suspenseful than scary. The mission for the people on this ship is to travel the farthest any human ever has and then turn around and travel back to earth. Cormac Easton is the ship's journalist. He is observing and writing about the mission for the folks back home. But the mission is far from successful. First they find the captain dead in his hypersleep chamber upon waking. Then the crew, one after another, die, all in different ways, until Cormac is the last man standing. And once he realizes the ship does not turn around towards home like it's automatically supposed to, Cormac knows he is doomed.
All that I've got up here is tranquility now, I suppose.
That's just the first quarter of the book. I'm not going to give away the rest of the story other than it includes flashbacks to the months and weeks leading up to the mission. During these flashbacks we learn more about the crew and Cormac's relationship with his wife. These flashbacks are revealing and important to what is happening on the ship. And what's happening on the ship is enthralling. The reveal is slow going, but never boring. It's dark and beautifully written.
That was how it was sold: a voyage to rival Columbus, to rival the stories of Jules Verne.
ARC provided through Edelweiss
October 26, 2013
I really enjoyed reading The Explorer. I found the story very intriguing, especially that it's a fictional story. The author portrays each character in a beautiful way. Cormac is one of the main characters in the story and as you read along you get more attached to his personality. At first you would think that Cormac is this nice respectable man but later on you discover that its on the contrary. I think that only a clever writer can convince you to like or dislike a character . The fictional part in the story where the author describes the scenes that occur through the eyes of Cormac is very interesting. I believe that its hard to create a scene in the eyes of one of the characters, because you could get confused while your writing. I give the author credit for writing in the way that he did, and making the reader understand at the same time. I recommend this book to those who like fiction and space exploration.
February 15, 2022
I liked this more on a reread. Yes, the science in the fiction is so wrong it’s silly, but the frustrated, fearful, unreliable narrator trapped in a self-inflicted hell was apparently what I was in the mood for here at the end of 2020.
Full review
Full review
January 25, 2014
After the first chapter, this novel could have really gone "where no one has gone before". Unfortunately, even if it's not a bad novel, it's only a darker and grittier episode of Star Trek.
March 2, 2013
Sam Rockwell could play Cormac Easton; the lonely man with the clone in space. The Explorer could be Moon, or 2001, or Event Horizon, it's a homage to the sub-genre of isolationist sci-fi, deeply reminiscent of its forebears, and yet a little different at the same time, and genuinely good.
Smythe starts in a predictable fashion, the crew are dying one by one, the ship is falling apart. I sort of expected an Alien / Slasher flick vibe; ninety minutes worth of terror, followed by one survivor at the end. Everyone, and I mean everyone is dead by chapter four, and yet somehow, Smythe keeps it going and creates a genuinely interesting story. There are complex ideas of quantum physics at play here, spatial anomalies, told through a human perspective, and in places it is fascinating.
There are moments of perfect atmosphere in here. Smythe creates a true vision of what it must be like to be alone in the void of deep space. He feeds in a range of perspective and events and twists them in a curious narrative looking glass that leaves you with those little 'ooh' and 'ahh' moments when you piece previously throw away plot elements in to the jigsaw that is the overall plot. Wondering why a character is reacting in the way they are? Keep hold of that thought, it'll all make sense later, and Smythe is so deft at it that you trust him that all will make sense in the end. It's very clever, and has you guessing from start to finish.
The novel is an exploration of the workings of the human mind and its responses to fear and terror. Smythe takes a harrowing situation and applies science to it, but it all still feels so human, so real. It reminded me not just of classic sci-fi, or the films I've mentioned above, but of fin-de-siecle classics like 'The Awakening' or 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. It's the sort of book that if it's written well, it works really well, if it's not, it could fail terribly. Simply put, Smythe got it right.
I think for me, the only flaw, and the reason I couldn't give it five is that there are moments where the book plays a little too closely to sci-fi stereotypes. Some of the characters are a little two-dimensional, and I could picture who they might be in other books or films from the genre. Overall though, it's a stirling effort, well worth a read, and I'll definitely be picking up some of Smythe's other work.
Smythe starts in a predictable fashion, the crew are dying one by one, the ship is falling apart. I sort of expected an Alien / Slasher flick vibe; ninety minutes worth of terror, followed by one survivor at the end. Everyone, and I mean everyone is dead by chapter four, and yet somehow, Smythe keeps it going and creates a genuinely interesting story. There are complex ideas of quantum physics at play here, spatial anomalies, told through a human perspective, and in places it is fascinating.
There are moments of perfect atmosphere in here. Smythe creates a true vision of what it must be like to be alone in the void of deep space. He feeds in a range of perspective and events and twists them in a curious narrative looking glass that leaves you with those little 'ooh' and 'ahh' moments when you piece previously throw away plot elements in to the jigsaw that is the overall plot. Wondering why a character is reacting in the way they are? Keep hold of that thought, it'll all make sense later, and Smythe is so deft at it that you trust him that all will make sense in the end. It's very clever, and has you guessing from start to finish.
The novel is an exploration of the workings of the human mind and its responses to fear and terror. Smythe takes a harrowing situation and applies science to it, but it all still feels so human, so real. It reminded me not just of classic sci-fi, or the films I've mentioned above, but of fin-de-siecle classics like 'The Awakening' or 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. It's the sort of book that if it's written well, it works really well, if it's not, it could fail terribly. Simply put, Smythe got it right.
I think for me, the only flaw, and the reason I couldn't give it five is that there are moments where the book plays a little too closely to sci-fi stereotypes. Some of the characters are a little two-dimensional, and I could picture who they might be in other books or films from the genre. Overall though, it's a stirling effort, well worth a read, and I'll definitely be picking up some of Smythe's other work.
November 15, 2014
I'm giving this 5/5 for several reasons:
1.) It got under my skin, in the same way House of Leaves did. That black, that void, the loneliness... nopenopenope.
2.) The narrative structure was brilliant, I thought. Very well done.
3.) The pacing was great, and the revelations of plot points kept me hungry for more. There are a lot of books where I enjoy the prose, and the characters are entertaining, but I could put them down and never pick them back up again. This book was not one of them. I HAD to see it through to the end, and I really loved that about it.
1.) It got under my skin, in the same way House of Leaves did. That black, that void, the loneliness... nopenopenope.
2.) The narrative structure was brilliant, I thought. Very well done.
3.) The pacing was great, and the revelations of plot points kept me hungry for more. There are a lot of books where I enjoy the prose, and the characters are entertaining, but I could put them down and never pick them back up again. This book was not one of them. I HAD to see it through to the end, and I really loved that about it.
July 10, 2013
I found this book very difficult to read. Within 52 pages, the reader knows what happens. The rest of the book is explication and a rumination on death.
July 24, 2023
Why I read it: blurb looked good! A manned mission into deep space, using a fail-proof shuttle, a rising body count, a mission that must go on... seems good, right? I was especially intrigued because it's not a very big book, and that seemed like a lot of ground to cover.
Thoughts: maybe all that was somehow not enough ground to cover?? Because it was covered extensively, over and over and over and over again. My hot take is this: from the makers of "this meeting could have been an email," we bring you: this book could have been a novella.
The one main downside to sci-fi no longer being the nearly exclusive domain of outré (or even downright pulpy) genre fiction is that people have made themselves at home enough that now they'll write time paradox novels about men whose sole driving forces are their divorces or their dead wives. Just recently I've read Ascension, and now this, and this trend fills me with contempt... as does the narrator/protagonist of this novel, who is the most passive and useless protagonist I've read about in a while.
Characters have the most inane conversations, to the point that I felt like I was reading a soap opera set on a space shuttle. The author works hard at trying to make me think these characters are interesting, and tries to make me miss them when they inevitably get knocked off. Well, that fails, because what the narrator narrates in the first bit of the book is what is extensively narrated again in the rest of the book, and the additions and new information doesn't add anything of actual value, and none of these characters are actually intriguing.
The narration itself is also extremely bland and repetitive, stretched out too far, like a student trying to pad out an essay -- much like I'm trying to pad out this review, I guess, because I can't think of coherent ways to express how little I liked this book. The cover says, "If you loved Gravity, Moon and Interstellar, this is the book for you." I've seen those movies and liked them, and this book is like an extremely disappointing and flavourless riff on all of them. Elements of those movies are recognisable, but not improved on, and not even rearranged into something interesting. What's more, I actually really love time travel and time paradoxes and just general time shenanigans... and this book has tried so hard to ruin that for me.
Though much more long-winded in parts, Project Hail Mary is a somewhat similar story with a couple of elements present in this book: last man standing protagonist, deep space travel, suicide mission, dead crew members, mistrust of the people running the whole thing. There's no time paradoxes in PHM, but at least it's an interesting book.
Stand-out scene: I'm struggling to think of something I might remember when I look back at this. Maybe the scene where Emmy thinks Cormac's killed Quinn but doesn't know it was Cormac from the time loop. It casts a lot of the early book narrative in a new light, and explains the rising paranoia. Unfortunately, all of basically everything happens so fast, the paranoia is barely allowed to germinate before it's killed off and Cormac is alone with himself.
Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: no. I will read the summaries on Wikipedia and the reviews on Goodreads, for a laugh.
Edited to add: holy shit, this is part of a QUARTET???????????? A quartet of what, pure disappointment??????
Thoughts: maybe all that was somehow not enough ground to cover?? Because it was covered extensively, over and over and over and over again. My hot take is this: from the makers of "this meeting could have been an email," we bring you: this book could have been a novella.
The one main downside to sci-fi no longer being the nearly exclusive domain of outré (or even downright pulpy) genre fiction is that people have made themselves at home enough that now they'll write time paradox novels about men whose sole driving forces are their divorces or their dead wives. Just recently I've read Ascension, and now this, and this trend fills me with contempt... as does the narrator/protagonist of this novel, who is the most passive and useless protagonist I've read about in a while.
Characters have the most inane conversations, to the point that I felt like I was reading a soap opera set on a space shuttle. The author works hard at trying to make me think these characters are interesting, and tries to make me miss them when they inevitably get knocked off. Well, that fails, because what the narrator narrates in the first bit of the book is what is extensively narrated again in the rest of the book, and the additions and new information doesn't add anything of actual value, and none of these characters are actually intriguing.
The narration itself is also extremely bland and repetitive, stretched out too far, like a student trying to pad out an essay -- much like I'm trying to pad out this review, I guess, because I can't think of coherent ways to express how little I liked this book. The cover says, "If you loved Gravity, Moon and Interstellar, this is the book for you." I've seen those movies and liked them, and this book is like an extremely disappointing and flavourless riff on all of them. Elements of those movies are recognisable, but not improved on, and not even rearranged into something interesting. What's more, I actually really love time travel and time paradoxes and just general time shenanigans... and this book has tried so hard to ruin that for me.
Though much more long-winded in parts, Project Hail Mary is a somewhat similar story with a couple of elements present in this book: last man standing protagonist, deep space travel, suicide mission, dead crew members, mistrust of the people running the whole thing. There's no time paradoxes in PHM, but at least it's an interesting book.
Stand-out scene: I'm struggling to think of something I might remember when I look back at this. Maybe the scene where Emmy thinks Cormac's killed Quinn but doesn't know it was Cormac from the time loop. It casts a lot of the early book narrative in a new light, and explains the rising paranoia. Unfortunately, all of basically everything happens so fast, the paranoia is barely allowed to germinate before it's killed off and Cormac is alone with himself.
Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: no. I will read the summaries on Wikipedia and the reviews on Goodreads, for a laugh.
Edited to add: holy shit, this is part of a QUARTET???????????? A quartet of what, pure disappointment??????
April 8, 2017
This is a book I meant to have read back in 2013 for The Readers Book Club, but I didn’t get my copy in time to start it before the podcast aired and it has been sitting on my shelf ever since.
The story is about a doomed crew of a privately funded space mission who are going to go where no man has gone before (the characters actually use that phrase a couple of times and it irked me a little that they didn’t use the more PC term “no one” or “no human” *shrug*). The book is narrated by Cormac Easton, a journalist, who is along for the ride to document this historical event. Initially Cormac’s reports are positive, but tensions mount among the crew as things continue to go wrong for the mission. The reader has only Cormac, who becomes increasingly more and more isolated, to trust that his version of events is accurate.
I thought this book was pretty tricky in its way and I enjoyed the twists in the story. And in the tradition of the kind of science fiction I appreciate, the story is less about the mechanics of space travel and more about the mechanics of what makes humans tick.
The story is about a doomed crew of a privately funded space mission who are going to go where no man has gone before (the characters actually use that phrase a couple of times and it irked me a little that they didn’t use the more PC term “no one” or “no human” *shrug*). The book is narrated by Cormac Easton, a journalist, who is along for the ride to document this historical event. Initially Cormac’s reports are positive, but tensions mount among the crew as things continue to go wrong for the mission. The reader has only Cormac, who becomes increasingly more and more isolated, to trust that his version of events is accurate.
I thought this book was pretty tricky in its way and I enjoyed the twists in the story. And in the tradition of the kind of science fiction I appreciate, the story is less about the mechanics of space travel and more about the mechanics of what makes humans tick.
October 31, 2019
3.5
I think I preferred this one to Echo, purely because they are almost the same story but with different characters and Cormac is more likeable than Milo but now I'm questioning my memories of Echo and I might have to flick through it again...?
I think I preferred this one to Echo, purely because they are almost the same story but with different characters and Cormac is more likeable than Milo but now I'm questioning my memories of Echo and I might have to flick through it again...?
August 22, 2019
A sci-fi dud. Avoid at all costs.
Read
September 2, 2024Bit lame
March 16, 2017
Nope. Yet more indulgent twaddle from somebody who clearly has no interest in either exploring ideas or emotions other than their own navel-gazing self importance.
The current trend for authors to use sci-fi as an excuse to have a single character moan about bollocks while nothing actually happens that actually matters, and for editors and blurb writers to disguise this in order to sell sub par books is sickening.
Internal monologues and existential introspection can work. But if it does, then you can generally be successful writing lit fic (which crosses over plenty with sci-fi). If you have to squeeze out sales by claiming your drivel is a 'tense thriller' then please leave genre fiction out of it.
The current trend for authors to use sci-fi as an excuse to have a single character moan about bollocks while nothing actually happens that actually matters, and for editors and blurb writers to disguise this in order to sell sub par books is sickening.
Internal monologues and existential introspection can work. But if it does, then you can generally be successful writing lit fic (which crosses over plenty with sci-fi). If you have to squeeze out sales by claiming your drivel is a 'tense thriller' then please leave genre fiction out of it.
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