Sadly, this book compares to his previous works as The Sims Mobile game does to The Sims 1 to 4. I think the problem is that it's written as Young Adult, and I'm just getting old.
As always it's full of great, mind-bending ideas. However it lags a little in the middle portion and the narrator's performance was a little grating at times.
I gave up with about 100 pages left - I just didn't care what happened to anyone in the book.
The narrative structure was very strange. It started off well - 2 teenage women sneaking off to have an adventure in the stars. Great - we're going to have a cool space opera / pirates thing.
Nope.
But very soon, tragedy strikes. Okay, cool, now we'll have a tense rescue.
Nope. Rescue happens. Okay, now we'll have a build up to revenge.
Nope. Back to home we go, where they try to drug her up to keep her home.
She escapes again and now we're back on the revenge trail.
But all the transitions were just written so dodgily and ungainly. With just enough weird vernacular ("lungstuff", for instance) to make it extra annoying.
Oh well.
Great/different sci-fi world. Engaging, never lets up.
At its best, kind of a bizarre inside-out Treasure Island. The only thing is, it feels like someone who doesn't write YA decided to write something from a couple of memos about what teenagers would like to read. The result is off putting. Not his best, but I did finish it.
