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katrinamiddelburg's review
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
sbisson's review against another edition
3.0
Recent Reads: The Ark. Patrick Tomlinson's political thriller starts with a missing person. But this is on the only starship to escape a dead Earth, and it's almost at the end of its journey. Cover-up, cults, and conspiracy.
elusivity's review
3.0
3 STARS
A decent mystery but a mediocre SF novel.
The society, characters, ways of life, are cut-and-paste straight from early 2000's America onto a spaceship approx. 250 years in the future. The way people talk, the assumptions they make, the social norms, the visceral emotional reactions, the day-to-day lives. No new slang of any type; no new ways to navigate living cheek-by-jowl with a lot of people in a very small space and being permanently linked to a network where some people have the privilege to invade other people's privacy within their minds; with strict limitations on food, water, air, etc. And people still quote 20th century pop culture as a way to demonstrate "cheesy humor"; when doing so would have been the equivalent of people today quoting Austen or Voltaire. Assumption of heteronormativity (granted, that might have been the clumsy attempt to conceal a red herring). A walk through the museum that contains all the representative art of mankind mentions only the western arts. A lot of loose threads, and people abruptly acquiring leaps of knowledge.
Nevertheless, a very readable book. Recommended for those who do not demand internal consistency to worldbuilding, and therefore can enjoy a zippy plot and an interesting mystery.
A decent mystery but a mediocre SF novel.
The society, characters, ways of life, are cut-and-paste straight from early 2000's America onto a spaceship approx. 250 years in the future. The way people talk, the assumptions they make, the social norms, the visceral emotional reactions, the day-to-day lives. No new slang of any type; no new ways to navigate living cheek-by-jowl with a lot of people in a very small space and being permanently linked to a network where some people have the privilege to invade other people's privacy within their minds; with strict limitations on food, water, air, etc. And people still quote 20th century pop culture as a way to demonstrate "cheesy humor"; when doing so would have been the equivalent of people today quoting Austen or Voltaire. Assumption of heteronormativity (granted, that might have been the clumsy attempt to conceal a red herring). A walk through the museum that contains all the representative art of mankind mentions only the western arts. A lot of loose threads, and people abruptly acquiring leaps of knowledge.
Spoiler
Characters are WAY too sanguine considering they just encountered a near-genocidal disaster that killed off half of humanity!!! And the ending--dropping a dual bomb shell that Tau Ceti contains intelligent life (apparently *humanoid*, for whatever nonsensical reason) AND that Earth was destroyed by aliens piloting a black hole--is way too abrupt, even in an attempt to construct a cliffhanger.Nevertheless, a very readable book. Recommended for those who do not demand internal consistency to worldbuilding, and therefore can enjoy a zippy plot and an interesting mystery.
3www's review
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
weirdtea's review
4.0
The mystery SF mix was a satisfying blend. I loved that it was set on a cleverly designed generation ship with loads of worldbuilding details incorporated naturally into the story. The sports hero angle was in the description but I was pleasantly surprised by turns into art, cuisine, and other areas. It made the more usual police, politics, and labs seem more interesting too.
It’s a fast paced read and has quite a few compelling characters. There were a few too many, um, “dude” descriptions of women/sex for me to not eye roll it a couple of times, but it wasn’t like they were particularly offensive or even out of place. So, there you go.
Cool SF. Solid mystery and thrills with satisfying surprises. I recommend it.
It’s a fast paced read and has quite a few compelling characters. There were a few too many, um, “dude” descriptions of women/sex for me to not eye roll it a couple of times, but it wasn’t like they were particularly offensive or even out of place. So, there you go.
Cool SF. Solid mystery and thrills with satisfying surprises. I recommend it.
jameseckman's review
3.0
A hard SF action detective mystery. How skillful are your police after 200+ years of very low crime? Nice background with decent characters, an excellent first novel.
glennisleblanc's review
4.0
The Ark has taken 10 generations to travel to a new colony world with the chosen survivors of Earth. Bryan is a former sports star now police detective asked to find a missing crew member. To really be missing is very hard since everyone has a tracker installed in their brain before birth. As he tracks down the missing scientist, he finds there are long hidden secrets on the ship between the crew and the passengers that will come out at the worst time possible as the ship is preparing to slow down and approach their new home. This is mostly a mystery police procedural set in space and I really enjoyed it. I want to see what happens next as they actually start their colony.
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
skjam's review
4.0
The generation ship known to its inhabitants as The Ark holds the last fifty thousand humans in the universe. Er, make that 49,999…and falling. When brilliant geneticist Edmond Laraby goes missing only a few weeks before the Ark is finally going to reach humanity’s new home in Tau Ceti (which should be impossible due to the tracking device implanted in everyone’s skull when they’re born), it’s up to Detective Bryan Benson to discover what happened.
Benson must find out what happened to Laraby, and puzzle out the motive. Was it his taste in stolen art? Something to do with his work on adapting plants to the conditions on the new planet? A personal dispute? Or something more sinister? Benson needs to find out fast, or more people are going to die, and failure could mean the end of the human race!
A couple of centuries from now, it’s discovered that a black hole is headed for Earth; there was just enough time to build a huge ship to take fifty thousand humans (chosen for genetic stability and general usefulness) from around the world to the nearest inhabitable planet. This universe doesn’t have faster than light travel, so it’s taken some more centuries to get there, with generation after generation being born and dying.
Benson’s direct ancestors faked their genetic records to get aboard, and got caught harboring a deadly inherited condition. The disease was excised, but the scandal has tainted the family line ever since, resulting in a tradition of being the lowliest of hydro-farmers. But Bryan Benson managed to break out of that by becoming a star athlete at the future sport of Zero, and then becoming the chief security officer of the Avalon half of the Ark.
It’s been something of a sinecure up until now; the Ark’s population is much better-behaved than an equivalent number of people on Earth That Was. So Benson has been pretty relaxed about the job, having an affair with an subordinate and taking time out to watch the final Zero series before the ship arrives. He has a lot of catching up to do when there’s a serious crime to investigate.
It’s interesting to compare this book to One in Three Hundred, the last story I reviewed about the remnants of humanity fleeing a dying Earth. In that one, the governments of Earth decided to go with the cheapest mass-produced ships possible and let the pilots decide which people to bring based on their own values and circumstances, with a low probability of individual success. So the population of the new world was essentially random. Here, the governments decided to build one ship with the maximum probability of success and hand-pick the survivors (with about the same numbers who actually make it through.)
As Benson’s investigation continues, he learns to his great surprise that there are a few secrets that have managed to survive the centuries; but murder investigations tend to turn up things people would prefer to stay buried, even if they’re not directly connected to the mystery. Some of the characters have surprising depths, while others are exactly what they appear.
Benson is a decent viewpoint character, sarcastic and fallible. In a hard-boiled mystery, he’s a detective that hasn’t finished cooking. The romantic relationship subplot is okay, but nothing to write home about.
There’s some good lines, too. My personal favorite is “The last time this gun was fired, sixteen million people died.”
Recommended for people who enjoy SF-flavored mystery stories, and fans of generation ship stories.
For more of my science fiction reviews, see https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4401570-skjam?shelf=sf
Benson must find out what happened to Laraby, and puzzle out the motive. Was it his taste in stolen art? Something to do with his work on adapting plants to the conditions on the new planet? A personal dispute? Or something more sinister? Benson needs to find out fast, or more people are going to die, and failure could mean the end of the human race!
A couple of centuries from now, it’s discovered that a black hole is headed for Earth; there was just enough time to build a huge ship to take fifty thousand humans (chosen for genetic stability and general usefulness) from around the world to the nearest inhabitable planet. This universe doesn’t have faster than light travel, so it’s taken some more centuries to get there, with generation after generation being born and dying.
Benson’s direct ancestors faked their genetic records to get aboard, and got caught harboring a deadly inherited condition. The disease was excised, but the scandal has tainted the family line ever since, resulting in a tradition of being the lowliest of hydro-farmers. But Bryan Benson managed to break out of that by becoming a star athlete at the future sport of Zero, and then becoming the chief security officer of the Avalon half of the Ark.
It’s been something of a sinecure up until now; the Ark’s population is much better-behaved than an equivalent number of people on Earth That Was. So Benson has been pretty relaxed about the job, having an affair with an subordinate and taking time out to watch the final Zero series before the ship arrives. He has a lot of catching up to do when there’s a serious crime to investigate.
It’s interesting to compare this book to One in Three Hundred, the last story I reviewed about the remnants of humanity fleeing a dying Earth. In that one, the governments of Earth decided to go with the cheapest mass-produced ships possible and let the pilots decide which people to bring based on their own values and circumstances, with a low probability of individual success. So the population of the new world was essentially random. Here, the governments decided to build one ship with the maximum probability of success and hand-pick the survivors (with about the same numbers who actually make it through.)
As Benson’s investigation continues, he learns to his great surprise that there are a few secrets that have managed to survive the centuries; but murder investigations tend to turn up things people would prefer to stay buried, even if they’re not directly connected to the mystery. Some of the characters have surprising depths, while others are exactly what they appear.
Benson is a decent viewpoint character, sarcastic and fallible. In a hard-boiled mystery, he’s a detective that hasn’t finished cooking. The romantic relationship subplot is okay, but nothing to write home about.
There’s some good lines, too. My personal favorite is “The last time this gun was fired, sixteen million people died.”
Recommended for people who enjoy SF-flavored mystery stories, and fans of generation ship stories.
For more of my science fiction reviews, see https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4401570-skjam?shelf=sf