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A review by chantaal
Paradise-1 by David Wellington
Did not finish book. Stopped at 55%.
This book attempted to throw every single sci-fi horror trope at the wall and when I logged it after my last commute I could not believe that I was STILL ONLY HALF WAY THROUGH. So much happened. So much! And yet nothing at all! I had to throw in the towel at 55% into the audiobook, for a number of reasons.
1. <b>The narration</b>. Because this was an audiobook review copy from NetGalley, I'll put narration here at the top as the thing that I disliked the most. The narrator was fine, when it was actual story narrative. However, the moment she does a character's voice, no matter which character, it fell apart for me. She can't act. She just can't. Every character voice sounded like she was TRYING to be emotional or witty or scared as the story called for, but it grated at me. All the choices she made for inflection, cadence, emotion, every single one felt wrong.
2. <b>The characters</b>. This book didn't entire fail for me just because of the narration, however. By the 30% mark I was eye rolling at every single decision Petrova made. Actually, scratch that. I eye rolled HARD at the stupid fucking decision she makes in the SCENE THAT INTRODUCES US TO HER. She does the awful "go after a suspect who she just KNOOOWWWWWSSSS is guilty despite being commanded to stand down and ignoring direct orders just to fuck it all up" trope and it's a tired cliche in cop dramas and it's a tired cliche here. Every character in this feels like a trope to fill up a sci-fi story. We have a detective being ousted for a bad call. A pilot thinking this is his big chance. (These two characters had a brief romantic rendezvous years earlier and their reunion was so weird.) A doctor with a gruesome backstory that causes him to have PTSD and feels like he's coded as neurodivergent. A robot, because we always need a quirky robot friend, right? And of course there's ship AI all over the place being crazy, because we always need crazy AI in a sci-fi story, right?
3. <b>The story</b>. By the time I was half way through I really thought we were somewhere near the end of rising action. So much had happened to all the characters, big reveals were happening that felt like pieces of the story were finally locking into place - but its only halfway through? What the hell else can happen? In 50% of this book we had:the characters fighting to stay alive after the ship is damaged, which is a massive part of the opening action; the characters figuring out each others backstories and learning to work together; figuring out why another ship is targeting attacks at them; going to that ship only to find a crazy AI and cannibal zombie-esque crew; and they're that way because some kind of disease is infecting AI and humans alike; one character has major, major injury done to them; they get back to their ship with a "cure" for the disease so they can fix their own ship AI; a big secret is revealed about one of the characters, changing the perspective of just about everything that has happened between them all so far. AND THERE WAS STILL MORE STORY TO GO???? I looked at some reviews after I decided to DNF, and it appears that I just had a lot more story repetition and a terrible ending to look forward to, so I'll consider this a bullet dodged.
4. <b>The writing</b>. Of all the downsides this book had for me in the half of it I read, the writing was not one of them. Wellington can write in a way that is very compelling, and is very easy to read. If I hadn't been listening to the audiobook, I would have sped through this a lot faster. The chapters are short, propelling you through the story at a breakneck pace. One thing I disliked was the repetition; characters shrug a lot. Like, a LOT. Even the robot does "an approximation of a shrug" half a dozen times in random weird bodies it can't even shrug in.
I hate DNFing something that is this long, but at 55% of this, I listened to the equivalent of 300+ pages of the book. I hated the characters and the plot beats were making no damn sense. I knew I just had to give up on finishing this despite it being a NetGalley review copy when I was even ranting to my <i>husband</i>, and realized I'd only be exposing him to more ranting if I kept going and I love him too much to keep doing that.
1. <b>The narration</b>. Because this was an audiobook review copy from NetGalley, I'll put narration here at the top as the thing that I disliked the most. The narrator was fine, when it was actual story narrative. However, the moment she does a character's voice, no matter which character, it fell apart for me. She can't act. She just can't. Every character voice sounded like she was TRYING to be emotional or witty or scared as the story called for, but it grated at me. All the choices she made for inflection, cadence, emotion, every single one felt wrong.
2. <b>The characters</b>. This book didn't entire fail for me just because of the narration, however. By the 30% mark I was eye rolling at every single decision Petrova made. Actually, scratch that. I eye rolled HARD at the stupid fucking decision she makes in the SCENE THAT INTRODUCES US TO HER. She does the awful "go after a suspect who she just KNOOOWWWWWSSSS is guilty despite being commanded to stand down and ignoring direct orders just to fuck it all up" trope and it's a tired cliche in cop dramas and it's a tired cliche here. Every character in this feels like a trope to fill up a sci-fi story. We have a detective being ousted for a bad call. A pilot thinking this is his big chance. (These two characters had a brief romantic rendezvous years earlier and their reunion was so weird.) A doctor with a gruesome backstory that causes him to have PTSD and feels like he's coded as neurodivergent. A robot, because we always need a quirky robot friend, right? And of course there's ship AI all over the place being crazy, because we always need crazy AI in a sci-fi story, right?
3. <b>The story</b>. By the time I was half way through I really thought we were somewhere near the end of rising action. So much had happened to all the characters, big reveals were happening that felt like pieces of the story were finally locking into place - but its only halfway through? What the hell else can happen? In 50% of this book we had:
4. <b>The writing</b>. Of all the downsides this book had for me in the half of it I read, the writing was not one of them. Wellington can write in a way that is very compelling, and is very easy to read. If I hadn't been listening to the audiobook, I would have sped through this a lot faster. The chapters are short, propelling you through the story at a breakneck pace. One thing I disliked was the repetition; characters shrug a lot. Like, a LOT. Even the robot does "an approximation of a shrug" half a dozen times in random weird bodies it can't even shrug in.
I hate DNFing something that is this long, but at 55% of this, I listened to the equivalent of 300+ pages of the book. I hated the characters and the plot beats were making no damn sense. I knew I just had to give up on finishing this despite it being a NetGalley review copy when I was even ranting to my <i>husband</i>, and realized I'd only be exposing him to more ranting if I kept going and I love him too much to keep doing that.