/Heaven's Shadow/ -- Cassutt & Goyer. Please do not read this book. This is why.
Heaven's Shadow by David S. Goyer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Awful tedious crap.
Biggest pile of it I've read in years, in fact. Stale, derivative (worse, /knowingly/ so), with poorly-thought-out error-ridden tech (such as dial-up internet access from Antarctica) mixed with indifferently-executed Sufficiently Advanced™ alien tech: a big dumb object that they /call/ a BDO in the most crashingly-awkward move since Avatar's "unobtainium" which, it emerges, isn't dumb & which resurrects the dead as a (very poor) communications medium.
There's a mix of mysticism, cod-science, borrowed bits & bobs of tech, setting, plot & I lost count of what else. The characters are all cardboard-cutouts, populated with the same crass tokenism -- teen girl, wheelchair dude, jock space pilot, heroic mom, etc. -- as Glee. And the authors know it and think it's fun -- one character is consistently referred to as The World's Greatest Astronaut, for instance, with regular comments about his good looks.
The description is breathless, slow-paced and reads like a novelization of bad TV skiffy. It's about as coherent as Heroes was. Yes, that bad.
The authors have borrowed enough description of Space Stuff to do what they think is convincing detail. It bears as much resemblance to spaceflight as CSI does to actual police work. It's the wretched tissue-thin veneer of shininess that dominates modern Hollywood.
Please do not read this book. Do not buy it even as gift; you'll encourage 2 talentless hacks that should have stayed in the mindless media industry. I am tempted to give my copy away, as it was given to me, but then someone else might read it. Worse still, they might read it and think that SF should be like this.
Awful, terrible, trite, glib, kitsch, crappy, shallow, dull, uninsightful, clichéd, hackneyed shite. Really very bad indeed. Don't know why I finished it. A crashingly bad, stupid, shallow pastiche of /Rendezvous with Rama/ lacking any intelligence or thought, but slathered with sickening sentiment and seasoned with cryptoreligious schmaltz.
It's a crime that hacks this talentless can get writing work. Stick to doing scripts, guys. I already know better than to watch the kind of crap your studios put out.
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