I just finished Brotherton's "Spider Star" the other day, and have
been thinking about it a bit.
I picked up his first novel, "Star Dragon" in a used copy last year.
I thought it was interesting; really cool alien life form, no FTL...If
I had a problem with it, it was that I couldn't really get into any of
the characters...they seemed a bit too distant too me. I certainly
likedit well enough that I wanted to try his second novel....
"Spider Star" seems like a big jump forward. It again has some
interesting aliens, and a cool BDO, which I'm normally a sucker for.
Where the book works much better for me is in the characters, most of
whom I understood their backstories and motivations.
My question is, am I not being demanding enough in my fiction. I
liked "Spider Star" a lot, and the characters and society seems not
that different than today, whereas the society in "Star Dragon" was an
attempt to show a different society...humanity was changing in that
future, while they don't seem so different in the newer book.
This is sort of the issue I had with Peter Watts' "Blindsight" also.
I couldn't quite get a hold on the characters, since they seemed so
different (note that I still had "Blindsight" as one of the best
novels I read that year...it just fell short in my listing of what I
thought was "the best").
So am I punishing writers for been too ambitious?
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