F/SF

Upon visiting my hometown a few years ago I spotted this book in a supermarket's makeshift charity book shop stall. It was only 30p, and looked like solid science-fiction fun, so I bought it.

I could have paid some needy ragamuffin 20p to kick me in the balls, and I would have derived approximately the same amount of pleasure from the experience and saved myself 10p.

The book is easy to read, about the only good thing about it, so it didn't take me long to get through almost all of its three hundred and four pages. And yet as the pages passed nothing was really happening, and nothing kept happening. Finally, with about a page and a half to go, the plot appeared from nowhere and rapidly resolved itself. This really could have been a five page short story and still featured just as much character and plot development. Instead it's a drawn out drudgery of a novel which went straight back to a charity shop. ( )

Upon visiting my hometown a few years ago I spotted this book in a supermarket's makeshift charity book shop stall. It was only 30p, and looked like solid science-fiction fun, so I bought it.

I could have paid some needy ragamuffin 20p to kick me in the balls, and I would have derived approximately the same amount of pleasure from the experience and saved myself 10p.

The book is easy to read, about the only good thing about it, so it didn't take me long to get through almost all of its three hundred and four pages. And yet as the pages passed nothing was really happening, and nothing kept happening. Finally, with about a page and a half to go, the plot appeared from nowhere and rapidly resolved itself. This really could have been a five page short story and still featured just as much character and plot development. Instead it's a drawn out drudgery of a novel which went straight back to a charity shop. ( )