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This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Not for me.
 
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dianeham | 13 andre anmeldelser | Dec 1, 2022 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
The Publisher Says: In a chance encounter on the overnight train from Paris to Barcelona, Vikram Bhat stumbles across a promising new recruit.

Miles Townsend, an 18-year-old kid running away from a past he’d just as soon forget, is drawn to the older Indian man, dazzled by Barcelona, and smitten with the Hotel Kashmir’s bartender, Anna de Wit, a Surinamese grad student with a genius for languages and Vikram’s first recruit.

Miles and Anna have no idea they’re being recruited. They have no idea that Vikram is neither an Indian nor a man, or that he’s a few thousand light-years from home. He has a lot of secrets, it turns out. But he means well. When a series of bad decisions reveals the fact that Vikram isn’t the only one light-years from home—and this other one does not mean well—Miles and Anna become unwitting ambassadors to Vikram’s world, a place where the locals haven’t got their shit together any better than the people of Earth.

A unique coming-of-age story, Any Other World Will Do is inventive, irreverent science fiction, a wry commentary on the primal urge to flee our troubles and the romantic way we remember the journey.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review
: The problem with writing SF when you don't read it is that you rehash clichés that just won't fly anymore. Not to mention that the twenty-first century climate is such that having a literal alien masquerading as a South Asian and getting away with it is...troubling.

The other planet, the one that isn't Earth, to which the two kids are persuaded to travel, is a stock reimagining of Earth-plus-some-stuff. This is not in and of itself a bad thing. After all, is Earthlings are to survive on it, and if the Tonshu natives are going to travel here and survive, they need to be similar. But the 2020s don't really support serious (message-driven, not purely brain candy) SF with mysterious instantaneous transportation between planets.

The writing isn't awful. It isn't good, either. It's unfortunate that reviews of glowing, gasping praise for it lead one to expect a better-than-average reading experience that is not available. That said, I finished it, so clearly it wasn't dreadful. For the Kindle price, not-dreadful isn't all that bad a bargain.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
richardderus | 13 andre anmeldelser | Jul 22, 2022 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Lubertozzi's book, Any Other World Will Do, has a lot of components that should have made it a great story, however, it was hard to get into. The character development felt stilted, and it was difficult to get invested in what was happening to them, and the choices they were making. The pacing of the book was also awkward. About halfway through when the three main characters travel to Our World, there is a long break where the focus is entirely on world building and the plot doesn't happen at all, which made it hard to remain interested. The idea and a lot of the component pieces were very compelling, but overall it didn't come together well.… (mere)
 
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arcadia123 | 13 andre anmeldelser | Mar 16, 2022 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
I got this for free from librarything.com in return for an unbiased review.

The story starts with 18-yo Miles, taking a gap year by bumming around Europe. On a train in France he meets a guy named Vikram, an older Indian man who fascinates Miles. He suggests to Miles that he should go to Barcelona, that he would like the city. So, having nothing better to do, Miles goes to Barcelona.

He again meets up with Vikram in the Hotel Kashmir, a transient hotel with a lot of students from around the world hanging out. Among them is the slightly older (a worldly 22) Anna, working as the Kashmir's bartender. Miles is immediately smitten with her. It turns out that she lives at the hotel with Vikram as her roommate. There's another guy, Anders, a beefy Scandinavian type, who is Anna's lover. Anders isn't very trustworthy and when he an Anna breakup, Miles is able to take his place with Anna.

So far, a pretty good coming-of-age story. Then it starts to get weird.

Turns out Vikram isn't actually human. He's from another planet that is having a serious environmental crisis. Vikram was sent to Earth to gather genome samples of Earth plant and wildlife in the hopes of reviving his planet's ecosystem. He's also supposed to bring back a human to be an ambassador and had chosen Anna but decides to bring back Miles as well.

Travel to Vikram's home world is simple, he's carrying around on his wrist a device that can open a wormhole back to home. OK, this is the single most unbelievable part of the story but get over it.

Vikram's people are humanoid but with feathers and are both male and female at the same time. Vikram was just wearing a human clone on earth but returns to his own body when he (they don't really have pronouns in Vikram's language but Miles and Anna decide, for no good reason, to refer to all the aliens as he) returns home with Anna and Miles.

Vikram's home world is a mess. Seas have risen flooding much of its civilization. Nothing can grow on the surface due to an invasive mold. It's hot and windy with terrible storms on the surface. Most of the population lives below ground. It's a technologically advanced civilization (they've got wrist controlled wormholes!) but technology isn't going to save them.

Much of the rest of the book is a thinly disguised indictment of our world and policies. Which is OK. Our world and its policies need indictment. It's also about how Anna and Miles bring a different mind set to the aliens which help them to survive. I don't want to give too much away. Especially about Anders.

I liked the book. I might have given it a higher rating except it dragged in parts. For example there's the part where they are on a submarine that gets coated with some sort of marine slime animal which went on for far too long and didn't add much to the story. Miles was a little to woe-begotten early on and takes almost to the end of the story to grow some backbone. The Anna character was good. Although the story is mostly about Miles we learn some of her background.

I'd recommend the book.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
capewood | 13 andre anmeldelser | Nov 15, 2021 |

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Associated Authors

Ray Bradbury Foreword
Ben Bova Afterword
Orson Welles Contributor
Howard Koch Radio script
Warwick Goble Illustrator
John Callaway Narrator
Dan Rather Narrator

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Værker
5
Medlemmer
333
Popularitet
#71,381
Vurdering
3.9
Anmeldelser
16
ISBN
9

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