A nine-member team of Academy scholars from the planet Avalon led by the astrophysicist Karoly d’Branin are searching for the volcryn, an enigmatic alien species with an advanced interstellar travel technology. The main protagonist is Melantha Jhirl, a dark-skinned genetically engineered human who is a head taller than the other scholars. Due to limited funds, d’Branin has hired the services of the Nightflyer, a modified trader owned by captain Royd Eris. The enigmatic Royd keeps to his own sphere of the ship, preferring to correspond with the passengers via hologram. Royd secretly spies on the passengers using computer monitors.
To be honest this book was the first George R.R Martin book I’ve read. Game of thrones books are on my 2021 TBR list, so expect these reviews in a couple of months.
I didn’t knew anything about this book when I was going into it. This book is sort of science fiction type of book. There is a lot of spaceship action. 99% of this book takes place in a spaceship.
The characters here are super flat and it is very difficult to tell them apart. Because they are so similar to each other and none of them have anything unique about them or something which will make you go “yeah thats that person”. All these characters (expect of two) are so similar in behaviour that you will have very hard time separating them apart.
Writing style in this book are kind of similar to something which a 10-year-old would have written for a school assignment. The whole writing in this book is more or less “this happened and that happened.” For me personally the whole writing style felt lazy and it was almost like George R.R Martin was bored out of his mind when he was writing this book.
The ending is well bad, but still it is the best part of the book. This ending is the same as almost every other science fiction book or movie.
This book would be much better if it was longer and if George R.R Martin would bother to make the characters interesting and make us care about them.
In the end I need to give this book points for the unique idea behind it which we don’t see a lot of in science fiction books or shows.
It is important to say that this book have the potential to have more books written about it. Because it sort of leaves an open ending which means that there can be sequels, etc.
There are some very uncomfortable lines and there is way too much sexism. There are two lines which was used more than 5 times on every single page. These two lines were “I’m an improved model” and “I’m a sex machine”. Don’t think that these two lines were said by multiple characters in this book. These two lines were said by the same character over and over again. Every time that character said something it was involving one of these two lines. For me personally it was a torture.
Plot holes are also a huge part of this book. This book jumps in time like a lot. You will be reading one page and it will be about Day 1 of the adventures and then to begin to read page two and there will be like Day 50 of the adventures.
I promise you that you will have a lot of questions while you will read this book. And most of them will not be answered.
Descriptions feels like they were written by a 10-year-old. The descriptions are pretty much empty words without any deeper meaning.
Action in this book had the potential to be amazing and unique, but again George R.R Martin didn’t bother to give us this. There could be much more action than it actually was and the connection between the characters could have been shown but of course it wasn’t. And the dialogues aren’t much better. For the most part they are boring or cringe.
I give this book 1 / 5
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