The Voyage of the Sable Keech
(Spatterjay #2)
by Neal Asher
copyright 2006
read in July 2015
rated 8/10: really quite good
I'm torn... Eight out of ten or nine out of ten ? I think I'm right, at eight...
Remember, I rate books on my own reading enjoyment. Well written books may rate highly but not necessarily. Though, admittedly, a poorly written book will usually lower my reading enjoyment.
Voyage is great fun. I love the space opera science. I love -- after some mental adjustment -- the over the top violence. I love it that the AIs have as much character as the humans (and other characters).
My rating problem is, that I recently scored a book at the hard to achieve nine... And I'm not sure that that book is really better than Voyage.
No, not better. I just enjoyed it more... in a different way.
Voyage is book two of a series. At the start, I don't know the characters. At the end, I am not overwhelmed by the character reveal. To me, the revealed character was still a stranger.
The other book -- Red Rising -- was self-contained. There was no expectation that I would already know any of the characters. Also... Red Rising was more like a movie: big action scenes interspersed with some character introspection. I'm still happy with my relative ratings... Just interested in testing my own reasoning.
Red Rising could have been influenced by How to Write a Blockbuster. Voyage is solid space opera. Rising is exciting and involving. Voyage is imaginative and non-stop.
What I would like to do -- what I recommend you do: read Spatterjay one. Then read Voyage. That, I believe, would be a nine out of ten reading experience.
"The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present." -- Hobbes via Watterson
1 comment:
Footnote: And now I realise that I have also read this book -- and reviewed it -- back in 2009 ! And that time... I rated it as a nine :-)
That's one benefit of having a searchable list of my reviews. No need to rely on memory. I did wonder -- while writing the latest review -- why the characters seemed familiar yet I was sure I had not read Spatterjay #1. Ah well.
If you too want to search -- look under the "Search for a Book" tab at the top of the review page.
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