What do you think?
Rate this book
Fall from Earth
Shi Jin is a rebel, the latest in a long line of those who have challenged the Borderless Empire and failed. Dropped with a crew of convicts on an uninhabited planet, Shi Jin - and mankind - encounter alien life forms for the first time. She discovers that she is part of a much bigger game... one that will force her to decide between her desire to defeat the Empire and the future of humanity.
- GenresScience Fiction
214 pages, ebook
First published November 1, 2010
31 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 8, 2011
I am the narrator for the audio book version of this produced by Iambic Audiobooks.
I really enjoyed the story, a great mix of dystopian themes with survival and alien first contact. Excellent ideas, interesting characters and some great twists. I will definitely be looking out for more books by Matthew Johnson.
I really enjoyed the story, a great mix of dystopian themes with survival and alien first contact. Excellent ideas, interesting characters and some great twists. I will definitely be looking out for more books by Matthew Johnson.
January 23, 2019
The pacing in this book plods along in a ho-hum manner. There are events that should have been exciting that didn’t end up feeling that way at all. The author doesn’t seem to understand how to alter his language to build up adrenaline and suspense. Even combat boils down to just a few jabs and cuts delivered in a perfunctory manner.
I didn’t find the characters very interesting. I had no real emotional reactions to them and didn’t particularly care about what happened to any of them. They were all very single-minded, too, without a lot of nuance. Jin isn’t a great main character–she’s so obsessed with her virtual chess game that it’s hard to care about her. Everyone seems like a playing piece to her. I also didn’t get a very good feel for why this rebellion of hers mattered so much to her. Make us care! Despite one or two quick flashbacks that I guess tried to establish this, they had so little effect on the current actions and emotions that they just didn’t help much.
The worldbuilding is the only thing that kind of interested me. The Borderless Empire and its odd Church had some promise, although the author didn’t dig into them very far. The alien planet is fairly alien–I didn’t feel like it was just Earth by another name. It kind of felt like the Empire didn’t think through very carefully the whole idea of sending a bunch of convicts to the planet, and it wasn’t clear what exactly they were supposed to be doing there to prepare the planet for colonization (after all, agriculture is basically illegal and they don’t seem to have been sent with building supplies). I also never really understood why they sent an officer down alone to check out what was going on, nor why that officer’s first major action was to try to kidnap the alien he knew almost nothing about. Nor could I understand why he took certain other actions later on. His presence mostly seemed to be a plot convenience to spur certain conflicts.
I wish I could say better things about this book. I was really looking forward to reading some colonization SF. Unfortunately, this book didn’t make the grade.
Original review posted on my blog: http://www.errantdreams.com/2019/01/r...
I didn’t find the characters very interesting. I had no real emotional reactions to them and didn’t particularly care about what happened to any of them. They were all very single-minded, too, without a lot of nuance. Jin isn’t a great main character–she’s so obsessed with her virtual chess game that it’s hard to care about her. Everyone seems like a playing piece to her. I also didn’t get a very good feel for why this rebellion of hers mattered so much to her. Make us care! Despite one or two quick flashbacks that I guess tried to establish this, they had so little effect on the current actions and emotions that they just didn’t help much.
The worldbuilding is the only thing that kind of interested me. The Borderless Empire and its odd Church had some promise, although the author didn’t dig into them very far. The alien planet is fairly alien–I didn’t feel like it was just Earth by another name. It kind of felt like the Empire didn’t think through very carefully the whole idea of sending a bunch of convicts to the planet, and it wasn’t clear what exactly they were supposed to be doing there to prepare the planet for colonization (after all, agriculture is basically illegal and they don’t seem to have been sent with building supplies). I also never really understood why they sent an officer down alone to check out what was going on, nor why that officer’s first major action was to try to kidnap the alien he knew almost nothing about. Nor could I understand why he took certain other actions later on. His presence mostly seemed to be a plot convenience to spur certain conflicts.
I wish I could say better things about this book. I was really looking forward to reading some colonization SF. Unfortunately, this book didn’t make the grade.
Original review posted on my blog: http://www.errantdreams.com/2019/01/r...
February 1, 2020
It is nice to read about truly alien extraterrestrials. The empires plan felt nonsensical and felt like just make Australia colonization story in space.
May 17, 2014
"Shi Jin is a rebel, the latest in a long line of those who have challenged the Borderless Empire - and failed. Dropped with a crew of convicts on an uninhabited planet, Shi Jin - and mankind - encounter alien life forms for the first time. She discovers that she is part of a much bigger game."
For the seasoned science fiction reader, here is a good planet colonization intrigue based on a interesting premise, as convicts are sent to prepare a suitable planet. Except that they land on an barely suitable and hostile environment. And they are not alone, there are two or three factions among the convicts, and did I tell you about the Equitable market system (nothing to do with our fair trade!) where the Borderless Empire controls all the food in the empire's worlds?
The main character, plus one other, is mildly interesting. I took a few weeks leave, because the plot, despite its richness, did not draw me enough. FFE suffers mainly from information discontinuity, a common occurence for a first novel.
A reader cannot be privy to all the inner workings of the Empire. Not enough back info in the beginning: the reader can not be as drawn to Jin's inner conflicts and her revolutionary past. I undestood only near the end that she had been a military herself. At a point in the novel, the Church and the heretic had me confused; fortunately, it gets settled as we read along.
There is an avalanche of infos clogging the last part, like this flashback (between two characters meeting on the planet) that would have been better if served earlier.
The redeeming qualities of FFE are : the contact with another race, with an original communication, and the conflict resolution between not two, but three sides coveting the same planet.
All in all, FFE reminded me of Alison Sinclair's _Legacies_. The world building and social ramifications are numerous, but it is difficult to get attached to the characters. Eventually, the pattern (or revelation, or pay-off) emerges, but some inlkings could have been given way earlier without problem.
For the seasoned science fiction reader, here is a good planet colonization intrigue based on a interesting premise, as convicts are sent to prepare a suitable planet. Except that they land on an barely suitable and hostile environment. And they are not alone, there are two or three factions among the convicts, and did I tell you about the Equitable market system (nothing to do with our fair trade!) where the Borderless Empire controls all the food in the empire's worlds?
The main character, plus one other, is mildly interesting. I took a few weeks leave, because the plot, despite its richness, did not draw me enough. FFE suffers mainly from information discontinuity, a common occurence for a first novel.
A reader cannot be privy to all the inner workings of the Empire. Not enough back info in the beginning: the reader can not be as drawn to Jin's inner conflicts and her revolutionary past. I undestood only near the end that she had been a military herself. At a point in the novel, the Church and the heretic had me confused; fortunately, it gets settled as we read along.
There is an avalanche of infos clogging the last part, like this flashback (between two characters meeting on the planet) that would have been better if served earlier.
The redeeming qualities of FFE are : the contact with another race, with an original communication, and the conflict resolution between not two, but three sides coveting the same planet.
All in all, FFE reminded me of Alison Sinclair's _Legacies_. The world building and social ramifications are numerous, but it is difficult to get attached to the characters. Eventually, the pattern (or revelation, or pay-off) emerges, but some inlkings could have been given way earlier without problem.
September 3, 2016
Pretty good SF think piece about a crew of criminals, shipped off to serve their sentences as colonists on an uninhabited planet. They are subjects of a Chinese-like interstellar empire and its Catholic-like religion, both of which condition their varied responses to the new environment. And then the aliens show up, and everyone needs a new strategy...
The ideas set in motion were quite interesting, and the characters on each side fairly believable. But the sentence-level writing and dialogue were somewhat flat, all sentences repeating the same pattern, too many present participles and unnecessary oh!s.
(I listened to the Iambik audio recording, narrated by Emma Newman, which was smoothly done, only occasionally a little affectless.)
The ideas set in motion were quite interesting, and the characters on each side fairly believable. But the sentence-level writing and dialogue were somewhat flat, all sentences repeating the same pattern, too many present participles and unnecessary oh!s.
(I listened to the Iambik audio recording, narrated by Emma Newman, which was smoothly done, only occasionally a little affectless.)
June 9, 2013
What's a criminal and what's a rebel. Our protagonists are shipped to a futuristic version of Australia with a really crappy environment as a pretext for vested interests on Earth to provoke a way with aliens. The writers creates some truly different aliens.
November 7, 2010
I really enjoyed the book once I finally got to reading it - more due to life preventing a lot of reading than anything else.
April 3, 2016
I don't know why Johnson's work isn't more widely known. This is inventive, multi-layered world building at its finest.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews