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2312 vs. The Kassa Gambit
I recently started to read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. I liked his Red Mars series, and had seen some good reviews of 2312, so I decided to give it a shot.
Color me underwhelmed. 2312 is slow, overly verbose, and has very long stretches where nothing happens. Oh, and I couldn't find a character I really gave a damn about. About halfway through the book, I found myself dreading the thought of reading it. So I stopped, operating under the principle that life is too short to read books you don't like.
I then turned to a book by a new author, M. C. Planck. The book, The Kassa Gambit, was being pushed by the Science Fiction Book Club, and sounded interesting.
It was dynamite! It was everything 2312 wasn't - fast-paced, action-filled, and had a number of characters I liked, both major and minor. There was a bit of fridge logic (warning! TVTropes time-sucking link!) at the end, but otherwise it held together nicely. What's not covered in the blurb is that the book is actually a romance as well as a science fiction actioner. Yep - Planck packs more in 288 pages then KSR in 588.
Don't bother with 2312, and do buy The Kassa Gambit.
Color me underwhelmed. 2312 is slow, overly verbose, and has very long stretches where nothing happens. Oh, and I couldn't find a character I really gave a damn about. About halfway through the book, I found myself dreading the thought of reading it. So I stopped, operating under the principle that life is too short to read books you don't like.
I then turned to a book by a new author, M. C. Planck. The book, The Kassa Gambit, was being pushed by the Science Fiction Book Club, and sounded interesting.
It was dynamite! It was everything 2312 wasn't - fast-paced, action-filled, and had a number of characters I liked, both major and minor. There was a bit of fridge logic (warning! TVTropes time-sucking link!) at the end, but otherwise it held together nicely. What's not covered in the blurb is that the book is actually a romance as well as a science fiction actioner. Yep - Planck packs more in 288 pages then KSR in 588.
Don't bother with 2312, and do buy The Kassa Gambit.