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A review by timinbc
The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
3.0
I dunno, I think I'm being generous at three stars.
First, there's the basic premise, that humans are being "ridden" by aliens who are split into two factions and have been manipulating human affairs for millennia. OK at first glance, but a tad shaky on implementation. It's a bit like "past lives" where no one ever celebrates having been an unlucky peasant whose job was mucking out stables till he died at 27 from the plague. Chu tries to play the ubiquity of the aliens as a bit of a joke (for example, he could well have included "Classic Coke? Yeah, that was us") but as it builds up it gets unworkable. YMMV.
At times Chu does address the philosophical questions such as "do humans matter anymore?" As Roen gets more skilled he has to get past the shock of his first kill, but a few pages later he's mowing down opponents and sending his teammates to their deaths without hesitation.
Roen is a schlub, and Chu handles his development reasonably well. But he never makes us LIKE Roen, and his female characters are odd. One is hyper-capable and the other is all "ooh, Roeny!" Sonya almost made it to interesting, but then the plot turned ... and Jill likes Roen for no discernible reason.
Tao and his colleagues are annoyingly smug. The bad guys are stock cardboard nyah-hah-hah characters whose only interesting feature is that every couple of chapters we learn that not only does A report to B, but B reports to C, and C to D, and D to E .... and each time we realize that the guy we thought was a hyper-capable leader is in fact a schlub and it's the NEW guy who's all badass.
There are some action scenes, all fist-signally and stuff so we know he's done the research for those who like military SF. Didn't care for the resolution of the final one, though perhaps a more experienced writer could have sold it to me as "sometimes you win a fight just because you were lucky."
There are several signs that the book could have used some work by the various kinds of editors, but I am prepared to blame the publisher for this.
It's a lightweight book with occasional pretensions of being more, but stays lightweight because the base and the writing are just not strong enough to support any attempts at philosophy. Read it as lightweight and you'll probably enjoy it.
But I'll probably let #2 go unread.
First, there's the basic premise, that humans are being "ridden" by aliens who are split into two factions and have been manipulating human affairs for millennia. OK at first glance, but a tad shaky on implementation. It's a bit like "past lives" where no one ever celebrates having been an unlucky peasant whose job was mucking out stables till he died at 27 from the plague. Chu tries to play the ubiquity of the aliens as a bit of a joke (for example, he could well have included "Classic Coke? Yeah, that was us") but as it builds up it gets unworkable. YMMV.
At times Chu does address the philosophical questions such as "do humans matter anymore?" As Roen gets more skilled he has to get past the shock of his first kill, but a few pages later he's mowing down opponents and sending his teammates to their deaths without hesitation.
Roen is a schlub, and Chu handles his development reasonably well. But he never makes us LIKE Roen, and his female characters are odd. One is hyper-capable and the other is all "ooh, Roeny!" Sonya almost made it to interesting, but then the plot turned ... and Jill likes Roen for no discernible reason.
Tao and his colleagues are annoyingly smug. The bad guys are stock cardboard nyah-hah-hah characters whose only interesting feature is that every couple of chapters we learn that not only does A report to B, but B reports to C, and C to D, and D to E .... and each time we realize that the guy we thought was a hyper-capable leader is in fact a schlub and it's the NEW guy who's all badass.
There are some action scenes, all fist-signally and stuff so we know he's done the research for those who like military SF. Didn't care for the resolution of the final one, though perhaps a more experienced writer could have sold it to me as "sometimes you win a fight just because you were lucky."
There are several signs that the book could have used some work by the various kinds of editors, but I am prepared to blame the publisher for this.
It's a lightweight book with occasional pretensions of being more, but stays lightweight because the base and the writing are just not strong enough to support any attempts at philosophy. Read it as lightweight and you'll probably enjoy it.
But I'll probably let #2 go unread.