Status Updates From A Grey Moon over China

Irritating technique of having characters cryptically hint at things or almost remember them, but get somehow interrupted. Until 10-20 pages later the mystery is resolved. Artificial stakes-building.

Day is clearly attempting to craft high-stakes, tense action scenes, yet fills them up with such incomprehensible technical jargon that the lay reader has no idea what is happening. I'm just skimming to the end of the sequence to get to the outcome.

On a hunch I've looked up Day's bio to find that his day-job is in tech/aerospace. Let's just say that tracks with my reading experience.

Bizarre obsession with G-forces, without ever actually having done the legwork to explain how they work or why we should care.

Feels like the book could have started about where they are now, having established colonies on a new system and dealing with Earth geopolitics they've dragged with them.

Writing still feels pretty bad... at least not as dated/stilted as Asimov but otherwise about at that level.

Remarkably poor world-building and character development, with instead a perplexing emphasis on procedural minutiae and (fictional) tech specifications

I've never read anything like it. The language is both precise and wonderful, both logical and poetic. Nothing is said by accident.

Thomas Day forces you to read between the lines, to deduce both what's happening and why it's happening. It's not just a matter of leaving it to your imagination as it is forcing you to use your powers of deductive reasoning.

Thomas Day forces you to read between the lines, to deduce both what's happening and why it's happening. It's not just a matter of leaving it to your imagination as it is forcing you to use your powers of deductive reasoning.

Stunningly well written. And I'm not just saying that to get you all to read it. Okay, maybe I am, but it's true. I was seriously afraid that I wouldn't like this book as much the second time through, especially having read some seriously good books over the last couple of years. But if anything I appreciate this book even more. Truly a unique work.

Stunningly well written. And I'm not just saying that to get you all to read it. Okay, maybe I am, but it's true. I was seriously afraid that I wouldn't like this book as much the second time through, especially having read some seriously good books over the last couple of years. But if anything I appreciate this book even more. Truly a unique work.

Phew ... it's as good as I remembered. That's a relief!

Very promising so far!