Anyone who reads my reviews knows that I'm just sick any time I can't give a stellar review to a fellow indie author, because I know how hard it is out there. But I also have to be honest. In the case of this book, however, a large part of my rating is more subjective than usual. I'll explain.
Space travel and exploration ended up being huge in this story, which I didn't expect from the description. Because I was never caught by the "astronaut bug" as a child, this didn't grab me like it would someone else, so I didn't hook into the tension of the story as much as I'd hoped. This is the particularly subjective part, because this is in no way the fault of the author's. This is my deal. So, someone who is more into that would get into it way more, I'm sure.
Secondly, it's sold as being in the style of Crichton. And to a degree, that's not wrong, as certain elements I've noted in my reviews of Crichton's work -- namely, more Tell than Show, and a plethora of not-very-sympathetic main characters -- were here. The problem is that it's hard to be Crichton and these things actually didn't work for me here. Crichton also had an easy flow to his prose, even when describing heavy technical matters, and condensed time frames that really held tension.
One of the reasons was the use of the time jumps. We'll hop years at a time and there was a couple cases where only one or two chapters was in any time frame. I understand, I think at least, why this was done -- because of the nature of the story -- but for me, it lost a lot of tension. Towards the end, I really felt the tension building, but then we jumped two years and I lost it. It made the pacing a little hard to keep along side.
And these short "time spaces" seemed like an effort to Show rather than Tell, which given a lot of Telling in other places made things kind of... interesting.
Otherwise, I had a few other issues that hampered my enjoyment.
It started off feeling remarkably word heavy, like prose trying too hard to sound important and to explain too much about each sentence, and a lot of the characters and dialog felt very forced and not natural. This improved after the first few chapters, though recurred here and there. (Though I did appreciate how the nursery scene was handled.)
Curiosity did compel me forward and it wasn't a bad story or book. It wasn't badly written, but the "key" plot did feel like it took a while to feel clear and that gave me this feeling of wondering; things felt kind of pointless at times. This did almost lose me from the story more than once, but I was able to finish. Given my alarming DNF rate on books, that's actually noteworthy.
Characters were rough. I didn't feel like I got to know Anthony enough to feel the impact of his main scene, and then we built up a lot on Carol and Gena and then just moved off, though I did like the lasting effects of the events of the first two chapters on Carol. It's more realistic than a lot of fiction is. I found Neil inconsistent and didn't find any of the Dreamer kids to be very sympathetic until later in the story, though I ended up liking Russell, and Bill. Eric was all right, too, by the end.
Mark I also wrestled with, not because of the character himself, but wondering if the dramatic upbringing and life he led is actually necessary to the character and to the story. I could see it being used in some areas, but I'm not sure if it was all necessary or just given to him to be in stark contrast to the lives of the others.
So, my concluding thoughts here are that I'm conflicted. It wasn't a bad idea or story, and while I had my issues, it wasn't badly written. I think it would be a fantastic book for someone with different tastes in certain areas, or maybe I would've liked it better if I'd known a little more about the over-all tenor of the book. And yet, because I am as I am, I'm not sure I can say that I "liked" it. It definitely never really "grabbed" me, so this one has to fall in at a 3.
Don't know if I'll be checking out the second book, but curiosity may continue to compel me.