Book Review 2011 #5: Swarm
Swarm by B.V. Larson
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating:
UFOs, aliens, robots, invasion: sounds like a good recipe for a thrilling action book, doesn't it? I sure thought so. Instead I ended up wasting several hours reading a book that I kept hoping would get better.
I think one of the main reasons I'm so annoyed about having read Swarm is because it started out so well and with such promise. It could have been an excellent book, but I feel that the author really dropped the ball. I should have given up when I was about one-third of the way into the book-that's when I first started complaining to my husband about the characters.
But, wait... Let me back up a bit.
My husband started reading Swarm first and, after a few chapters, he couldn't stop talking about how exciting and intense the book was. Just listening to him made me want to read the book so I could share in his excitement as well. So, I downloaded it onto my Kindle and started reading. The first few chapters were amazing-harrowing, suspenseful, thrilling and heart-breaking-just as he'd said. I was hooked.
However, I think the non-stop action turned out to be one of Swarm's major downfalls. Character development was pretty much ignored in favor of action. I'm not against action in any way, but I do like to have some character development mixed into a story otherwise the characters are hard to relate to and seem very shallow, which was the case here.
For instance, take Sandra, who became the main character's love interest. I should have known what to expect of her character when the UFO's AI tied her up spread-eagle and naked to "protect" Kyle, the male main character, from her. The author had a reason for this (until another solution was presented, tying her up was the only way the ship would allow Kyle and Sandra to be in the same room together), but it definitely came across as blatant fanservice.
I could probably have overlooked that if the author had ever developed Sandra beyond her main distinction as the hot babe of the book. Instead, her sporadic presence in the book was limited to wandering around the ship waiting for Kyle to finish with his duties, tending Kyle's wounds when he returns from fighting the robots, and kissing Kyle because...I don't know why actually, they seem to have no chemistry beyond "we are two people stuck in a weird and scary situation together" (and their "love" scenes were boring and lacking any sensuality whatsoever). From what I could tell, Sandra had no personality beyond what she could do to service Kyle.
I think the author should have developed Sandra more or just left her out entirely. Based on how she was first introduced into the book (which happened before the naked, spread-eagle scene), I guess I was hoping she'd be one of those kickass females in action stories who can stand alongside their partner and love-interest and fight for the cause with him. Sandra did not fit that category at all. I would even have been happy if she at least had some outside interests or profession that had nothing to do with Kyle so that she was a complete person in her own right. As it was, she was presented as someone who could never be on equal terms with Kyle. Not a healthy relationship, in my opinion.
If that wasn't bad enough, Kyle, the main character was inconsistently portrayed throughout the story. He started off as a professor of computer science and by the end of the book he was the greatest military genius the world had ever known. For example, once he got his ship, he became a colonel in the space force. In other words, he was of high rank, based on his computer expertise and ability to communicate the ships (the UFOs), but still supposed to answer to his superiors; however, you'd never know that since he rarely consulted anyone with the decisions and actions he undertook. For some reason, he thought he knew better than anyone else in the entire story including his superiors, various experts and the governments of the world. This became ridiculous by the end of the book when Kyle made a life-changing decision concerning all the humans on earth without ever consulting anyone in charge.
I could go on about other things that I didn't like about the book, but I've covered my major annoyances.
So, yeah, if you couldn't tell, I'm not recommending this book at all. Maybe if you're able to turn your brain off and just enjoy the ride...but I was unable to do that.
P.S. One thing that confuses me about Swarm is the 4½ star rating this book has on Amazon. I skimmed the reviews and found only four (out of about fifty) reviews that had any of the same problems that I did with the book. The rest were almost uniformly positive and lauding high praise on the author. I really don't understand. I guess I'm not the audience the author was writing for.