A review by cullen_mi
The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man, Volume 1 by Dave Hutchinson
3.0
Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy.
It pains me to give three stars to this, as I am such a big fan of Hutchinson's Fractured Europe Sequence, and have thoroughly enjoyed his other works as well.
I had two major problems with this:
Problem one: The pacing. It's called The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man. There's a picture of an incredible exploding man on the cover. You would think the book would largely be about an incredible exploding man, right? No. The first 80% of the book is kind of a mystery story about an author exploring a town and its particle collider facility. This might work alright, except that 80% is really not that enjoyable to read. Partly because of...
Problem two: The writing. I've read six other books by this author and always felt his writing varied between pretty good and excellent. Here I started to notice sentence constructions that were used all the time. Almost every page had one or two exchanges of dialog that were prefaced by a level stare or a grin. It got very distracting. The characters were also not fleshed out particularly well, and some of the subplots just went... nowhere.
[b:Europe in Autumn|18143945|Europe in Autumn|Dave Hutchinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1382971951l/18143945._SY75_.jpg|25491267] worked so well because it had a well-written and interesting story about near-future espionage, and hits you with a sudden high-concept sci-fi curveball in the final act. This book seems to try to recapture that formula, except the story isn't well-written or particularly interesting, and the sci-fi curveball is prominently displayed in the title and on the cover.
Maybe if the title of the book had been The Arrival of the Pudgy and Awkward Science Writer the final act could have made this into a 3.5 or 4 star book, but the writing would still be holding it back. More realistically, the first 200 pages could have been shortened to the first 30 pages of a really good novella.
It pains me to give three stars to this, as I am such a big fan of Hutchinson's Fractured Europe Sequence, and have thoroughly enjoyed his other works as well.
I had two major problems with this:
Problem one: The pacing. It's called The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man. There's a picture of an incredible exploding man on the cover. You would think the book would largely be about an incredible exploding man, right? No. The first 80% of the book is kind of a mystery story about an author exploring a town and its particle collider facility. This might work alright, except that 80% is really not that enjoyable to read. Partly because of...
Problem two: The writing. I've read six other books by this author and always felt his writing varied between pretty good and excellent. Here I started to notice sentence constructions that were used all the time. Almost every page had one or two exchanges of dialog that were prefaced by a level stare or a grin. It got very distracting. The characters were also not fleshed out particularly well, and some of the subplots just went... nowhere.
[b:Europe in Autumn|18143945|Europe in Autumn|Dave Hutchinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1382971951l/18143945._SY75_.jpg|25491267] worked so well because it had a well-written and interesting story about near-future espionage, and hits you with a sudden high-concept sci-fi curveball in the final act. This book seems to try to recapture that formula, except the story isn't well-written or particularly interesting, and the sci-fi curveball is prominently displayed in the title and on the cover.
Maybe if the title of the book had been The Arrival of the Pudgy and Awkward Science Writer the final act could have made this into a 3.5 or 4 star book, but the writing would still be holding it back. More realistically, the first 200 pages could have been shortened to the first 30 pages of a really good novella.