Review: Under Fortunate Stars

Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It's not often I alright say that a book isn't worth your time, but, just this once, I can't help it. It's not particularly bad in any real way, I just found myself regretting even reading it. Time is more than just a linear passage of space through the existence of the universe, it's also a limit. With that deathly constraint, I almost abandoned this book after the first few disappointing chapters. I don't like quitting books, even if I'm not enjoying it, but I have better things to read. Then this book commits the sin of getting interesting, so I stuck with it. Then it got boring again, then interesting, then boring once more until its putters around towards its unearned conclusion. Honestly, if this book had a better editor, I probably would have been singing its praises, but its bloated and its pacing is terrible. So yeah, don't waste your time.

So I don't feel like a complete jerk, I will say the prose are detailed. I'm not saying 'good', just 'detailed'. There are lots of shrugging of shoulders and dodgy eye movements. It makes the story come alive, but whatever it does right on the small scale doesn't make up for its larger issues. I will repeatedly die on the hill that small detail and large scope should be equally treated but you should always strive for both rather than just one.

Back to being a jerk, I will also say that's nothing particularly original here. The author doesn't outright rip anyone off, but the plot points are a massive blender of things we've seen before. The world building is well introduced. There's nothing that hasn't already been done in a decent episode of Star Trek: TNG. At least none of the crew members bone a ghost. That would be awkward.

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