Post-Human

This is a very silly book. Basically it's a superhero comic book in the form of a novella, with no pictures. And given that most of the value of a comic book is in the pictures, well, you get the idea. :)

I got it free as an Amazon e-book, and at that price it was almost sort of worth the time spent reading it. But at 99 cents or 2.99, which it seems to be most of the time, I would definitely not recommend it. The technology is silly (magnetic fields just don't do any of those things, for instance), the characterization is flat, the plot is unconvincing (the godlike bad guy would not have needed to keep the human heroes alive for the tissue-thin reason given), and I felt like I had to wash my hands after the inconvenient wife was conveniently killed off so the hero could get the (other) girl without having to actually deal with the issue.

But anyway. :) I always feel guilty that I enjoy writing negative reviews, so I will stop there. Oh, one additional note: the author was for awhile offering a free book to anyone leaving a five-star review on Amazon. So take at least those with one more grain of salt than usual!

Putting aside the blatant bribery to get 5 star reviews on Amazon (more on that later), Post-Human is a potentially interesting story spoiled by clumsy execution.

The characters while paper thin are appealing enough and the situation moves so rapidly that someone is always in danger which keeps your attention on the story.

The problem is when you step back a bit and look at things. I'm not talking about the science here, just basic writing structure. New plot elements are dumped into the story mid-flow just when the characters seem to have been written into a corner and without any previous mention.

Other plot elements are raised only to be ignored for the rest of the story. WHich is a shame because at least one of them (what is really going on with the AI)would have made for a less simplistic black and white story.

Other problems include a cast of genius level IQs who act like sheep and a protagonist who is not only the smartest person on the planet (ever!), but an action man hero to boot! Fortunately everyone just does what he says.

But perhaps the biggest failing is that nothing sticks. There's no real danger. By the end of the story everything has been restored by use of a good old cosmic reset button. Consequences seem non-existent in this universe.

The story has possibilities and with a bit of re-working I could easily see it scoring 3 to 3.5 stars. The preponderance of 5 star reviews on Amazon however is embarrassing.

The fact that the author flat out states you'll get a free copy of book two if you give a 5 star review (while cheerfully explaining that this is okay)in the text of the Kindle edition just makes all independent authors look bad.

And I'd really like to know what Amazon's position is on something like that.