A review by rouver
The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough

2.0

Ugh, this was terrible. I hated the main character who was weirdly whiny & insecure. The 'bad guy' was cartoonishly bad, and a dude who was presented as a martyr/hero was actually the bad guy, in my mind. He specifically hoarded vital information from the entire world in order to make a profit and caused his business partner to commit suicide (which he then hid from the guy's daughter so she'd keep working for him). I think the most egregious part of the whole book was that the author had NO IDEA HOW SPACE ELEVATORS WORK. You can wave your tech-the-tech wand at *some* stuff when you want to write about science that we don't have the technology to accomplish, but if you don't understand that there are very good reasons why a space ladder HAS to be placed at the equator, and subsequently place yours on the southeastern coast of Australia, then you have no business writing a sci-fi book where the entire story is centered around a space elevator. There was other nonsensical "science" in this that made me want to throw the book, but that was the worst by far.

I gave it 2 stars because it managed to make me hate-read it to the end, as opposed to just giving up.
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS TRASH