A review by kate_farber
Antarktos Rising by Jeremy Robinson
1.0
DNF at about...1/3rd through? I stopped before the official start of the race.
I have a fairly high tolerance for ridiculous sci-fi thriller beach novels, especially those of the explore-dangerous-new-worlds variety. But I just couldn't. It's too stupid. I could not suspend enough disbelief to deal with how bad the "science" is. It's not even internally consistent! Okay, fine, you want us to buy that it's possible to flash-freeze human beings in seconds (hahaha), but then you expect me to believe that only ONE person on the east coast survives because what, she alone has a generator and an electric heater? And as a photographer, she is crucial to the future of America because she's the only person who can...talk to her father? Clearly without her they'd have no way to...well...hmmm....
Even so, that might have been okay if the other aspects were redeeming, but nope. The characters are all generic cliches: the macho Latino! The hardass sniper woman! The absent-but-redeemed father! There's also a strange amount of Christianity going on and I started worrying that it would eventually lead to a cloying proselytizing moral about faith (but as a DNF, I could be wrong about that). This is a story in which four billion people die and strange creatures start spontaneously generating in a freaky giant-filled jungle, but I found myself bored.
What ultimately made me put it down though was the bounty of casual racism. The Latino man can't stop saying "chica"! Of course everyone else hates the Arab Alliance, their countries were so bad! Look how regimented and evil the communist Chinese are! If it's only concerned with preserving the light and justice of democracy, etc, why does the US ally with the European kingdom? I CAN'T.
I have a fairly high tolerance for ridiculous sci-fi thriller beach novels, especially those of the explore-dangerous-new-worlds variety. But I just couldn't. It's too stupid. I could not suspend enough disbelief to deal with how bad the "science" is. It's not even internally consistent! Okay, fine, you want us to buy that it's possible to flash-freeze human beings in seconds (hahaha), but then you expect me to believe that only ONE person on the east coast survives because what, she alone has a generator and an electric heater? And as a photographer, she is crucial to the future of America because she's the only person who can...talk to her father? Clearly without her they'd have no way to...well...hmmm....
Even so, that might have been okay if the other aspects were redeeming, but nope. The characters are all generic cliches: the macho Latino! The hardass sniper woman! The absent-but-redeemed father! There's also a strange amount of Christianity going on and I started worrying that it would eventually lead to a cloying proselytizing moral about faith (but as a DNF, I could be wrong about that). This is a story in which four billion people die and strange creatures start spontaneously generating in a freaky giant-filled jungle, but I found myself bored.
What ultimately made me put it down though was the bounty of casual racism. The Latino man can't stop saying "chica"! Of course everyone else hates the Arab Alliance, their countries were so bad! Look how regimented and evil the communist Chinese are! If it's only concerned with preserving the light and justice of democracy, etc, why does the US ally with the European kingdom? I CAN'T.
