Status Updates From Earthwind

I decided to finish this book after leaving it untouched for months.

A badly written book with a HORRIBLE ending. I will never forgive this book for taking so much of my life away!

When I read, I tend to imagine how I would film a movie version of what I'm reading. With this book, that would end up being a very confusing short feature. Because 90% of what the man writes is description of thought processes. The entire movie would have to be narrated, like an old Disney nature film, just so you could understand what the holy heck was going on.

Well, if I had any doubts about whose side I was on before, I'm definitely against Gorstein. Which I have to imagine is the intent. Why make someone so intentionally unlikeable unless you intend them to be unliked. Right? So he's Zapp Brannigan without the subtlety and restraint. Got it.

Creeping ever closer to the mid-way mark. I have finished Part 1: Ritual, and beginning Part 2: Retreat. And still, I don't like it. I can't make myself care about Elspeth. Darrin's just a prick. Moir seems nice enough, but when the characters who seem the most human (with the least "screen" time no less) are the space invaders who want to put organic spy cameras in everyone's heads...there's a problem.

Well, it may not be a bad BOOK, but it IS badly WRITTEN. Dude needs a proofreader. Commas all over the place, where they don't need to be, missing where they SHOULD be. I get what he's going for, mixing mystical with science-fictional, and that's cool and all. But he needs to start writing it BETTER. Which, seeing as it was already completely written almost 40 years ago, seems decidedly unlikely. I continue.

Well, it's not a BAD book, so far. Not a huge fan of non-linear storytelling, but given the memory-loss theme of the book, I guess it is a natural device to use here. Really hoping there are some expository flashbacks coming up though.

I know nothing of this story, I've never even heard of the author. I chose this book solely because the cover depicts a cavewoman being ravished by an anthropomorphic bat in front of a standard-issue 1950s phallus-rocket. And if you can't judge a book by THAT kind of cover, then this is a world I no longer wish to take part in.