Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsHumanity is composed of only the most deplorable
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 3, 2022
The writing in this series ranges from absolutely superior, through dull and boring, to made entirely of ancient clichés. (When was the last time you read 'her alabaster white skin…?) Different books in the series seem to contain differing amounts of each style.
To the above, you have to add the absolutely worst and most despicable aspects of humanity. This debauchery and total lack of morals seems to run throughout all of mankind. Even the 7-year-old uses xenophobic, alt-future racial slurs as part of her normal speech. Of course, profanity is sanitized by using future-sounding fake-words, all far too obvious for what they are.
After the third book, a couple major characters go away, new characters appear, characters change personalities, and the story morphs to a much different set of circumstances. It could have been done as a similar series rather than a continuation. It also become quite difficult to follow the multiple story lines, morphing characters, and contradictory time line. For example, not counting flash-backs, at one point, the main story is specifically described as flowing over a single year. However, that year includes more than a few 6-month travel-times; changes in the age of younger characters of at least a year; multiple jumps of '#-months later'; and at least one reference to 'over the course of the years', for a character-pair. Later, we jump about 8 years forward. As for redeeming qualities, the characters don't seem to have many (if any).
When the writing is at its high-points, reading is very fluid. The conclusion of the story is far more complete than just about any other SciFi I've read recently. About 70% of the time, the series has a really impressive writing style and is a good read. It's the other 30%, plus the depravity of all characters, that's troubling.
One thing I can say, for 99 cents, I did get a lot of reading-time. I'm just not particularly fond of the way characters, and to some extent the story line itself, are handled.
Afterthought: I found it interesting that Mr. Scott used the same name for the computer/God that Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson used in the Dune prequels. (According to the copyright dates, the Dune books came well before this series.) I'm not sure if the reference was deliberate, but it seems appropriate.
If you like apocalyptic stories, or the dregs of humanity, this is a very well written example. I just can't really get into the approach.
