Voyagers by Ben Bova is a sci-fi novel I picked up to listen to during the commute. I really didn't know anything about this particular book when I picked it up, but I have enjoyed Bova's work in the past and I remember him as an editor of the magazine "Omni."
Started: 5/8/2013
Completed: 5/14/2013
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: Nobody
Words I looked Up:
scud -- Move fast in a straight line because or as if driven by the wind.
Review:
It turns out that this is the first book of a trilogy, but I have no interest in reading the remaining two novels. I have a tremendous respect for Ben Bova but he is far from a good romance writer. In and afterword, Mr. Bova described this trilogy as a love story, but the "love" part of the story was clunky and useless. The romantic story was not particularly compelling and seemed to be both awkward and uncomfortable to me as a reader. The decisions made by the protagonist, Keith Stoner, seemed to be stereotypical and not the decisions of a real human being. His actions were so robotic as to suggest that he no other choice every step of the way. To my way of thinking, a romance is about making choices (both good and bad). This reads more as a bad comedy fraught with mistaken intentions. The backdrop of the Cold War was also rife with good guy/bad guy stereotypes leaving the background characters as flat. Having said that, there were two characters who were really interesting. The NATO scientist was extremely well developed and the nature of his story (describing it would be a spoiler) was really well conceived and portrayed remarkably well. The evangelist was given short shrift in the book in my opinion and was a wonderful character to have investigated more, but he remained flat. I think that including him in the book was a really good idea and helped round out the plot. I think that addressing more of his story would have been very rewarding.
I would not recommend this book. It is not really an interesting look at interaction with ET and the lugubrious romantic plot seriously detracted from the novel.
It turns out that this is the first book of a trilogy, but I have no interest in reading the remaining two novels. I have a tremendous respect for Ben Bova but he is far from a good romance writer. In and afterword, Mr. Bova described this trilogy as a love story, but the "love" part of the story was clunky and useless. The romantic story was not particularly compelling and seemed to be both awkward and uncomfortable to me as a reader. The decisions made by the protagonist, Keith Stoner, seemed to be stereotypical and not the decisions of a real human being. His actions were so robotic as to suggest that he no other choice every step of the way. To my way of thinking, a romance is about making choices (both good and bad). This reads more as a bad comedy fraught with mistaken intentions. The backdrop of the Cold War was also rife with good guy/bad guy stereotypes leaving the background characters as flat. Having said that, there were two characters who were really interesting. The NATO scientist was extremely well developed and the nature of his story (describing it would be a spoiler) was really well conceived and portrayed remarkably well. The evangelist was given short shrift in the book in my opinion and was a wonderful character to have investigated more, but he remained flat. I think that including him in the book was a really good idea and helped round out the plot. I think that addressing more of his story would have been very rewarding.
I would not recommend this book. It is not really an interesting look at interaction with ET and the lugubrious romantic plot seriously detracted from the novel.
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