Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: After reading the reviews I had high hopes. It's hard to find good scifi authors. Found the book tedious. The characters are thin and the extraneous details are just that, extraneous. I would rate it as almost OK. Read Heinlein, Asimov, Stephenson, Gibson, or any of the many other genuinely good scifi authors, and give this one a pass.
Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenal book... and it will make you question your place.
Review: Fantastic book, incredible premise. Neatly ties together many "loose ends" of the Earth's history, as well as raising questions for the reader's consciousness about our birthplace. It did so much for me that I actually researched the validity online of some of the claims.... and they were convincingly close to reality.
Rating:
Summary: SciFi for the New Ager
Review: Hogan has done serious science fiction in the past. His science was good and his characters even better. Thus, its a disappointment to read "Cradel of Saturn." It could have been written by one of my Pyramid hugging, Astrologer friends. The characters are out of central casting, and have no depth. The theme is typical New Agey. Ie. Traditional scientists are naughty and unimaginative, but those willing to think imaginatively are right. The plot is predictable, and the ending clumsy and unbelieveable. Hogan has ignored so many basic scientific laws that it would be a waste of time to recount them. This is not that important a book. Every author has a bad book in him. This is Hogan's. I read it to the finish, but would not recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: SciFi for the New Ager
Review: Hogan has done serious science fiction in the past. His science was good and his characters even better. Thus, its a disappointment to read "Cradel of Saturn." It could have been written by one of my Pyramid hugging, Astrologer friends. The characters are out of central casting, and have no depth. The theme is typical New Agey. Ie. Traditional scientists are naughty and unimaginative, but those willing to think imaginatively are right. The plot is predictable, and the ending clumsy and unbelieveable. Hogan has ignored so many basic scientific laws that it would be a waste of time to recount them. This is not that important a book. Every author has a bad book in him. This is Hogan's. I read it to the finish, but would not recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Cradle of Saturn
Review: Hogan's novel is science fantasy in the style of Richard Garfinkle's _Celestial Matters_ (which is set in an alternate universe where Aristotelian physics works). Hogan's premise is that the science and history of Immanuel Velikovsky are correct, and he also incorporates the work of Velikovsky's followers such as Charles Ginenthal. In Hogan's universe, electromagnetism really does control planetary motion, Venus really was ejected from Jupiter just a few thousand years ago, and Earth really did once orbit Saturn. To top it off, there really is a conspiracy of scientists trying to suppress these truths in favor of the establishment science. Unfortunately, Hogan's book doesn't measure up to Garfinkle's. Beyond the premise, there's not much new here. The first part of the book is a fairly predictable loner-against-the-conspiracy story. This is followed, once the Velikovskian physics comes into play, by another unsurprising escape-from-the-doomed-Earth plot. The action is also frequently interrupted by exposition, as one character or another stops to explain Velikovskian science. Except for the protagonist and one or two others, characterization is minimal. Most of the minor characters could be replaced with cardboard cutouts labelled "Precocious Child", "Government Bureaucrat", or "Establishment Scientist", and even the major characters are pretty flat. Overall, Cradle of Saturn will probably amuse watchers of fringe science and lovers of science fantasy, and parts might even appeal to fans of "The X-Files" genre. But it may be of little appeal to general readers.
Rating: 
Summary: Bizarre non-science Fiction
Review: I bought this book in an airport bookstore between connecting flights. I had not read about the book but generally have liked Hogan's works since he is a good writer and has enough science to create some interesting fiction. The book was tremedously disappointing. The idea that Earth was one of Saturn's moons until as recently as the Jurassic Era and was then blown somehow to its present orbit just makes no sense. Even if you bought the argument that warmth radiated from Saturn was enough to get life started on satellite Earth as it orbited Saturn, what sustained life during what would have been tens if not hundred's of years of interplanetary drifting by the orphaned Earth until it settled into its present orbit? The idea that Jupiter somehow ejected what became Venus from its own mass in the past 10,000 years is equally preposterous. The energy to hurle the mass of Venus out of Jupiter's gravity well would be astronomical. Hogan's superficial reference to Jupiter's known role as a protostar at during the formation of the solar system is really hoaky. Enjoyable SF requires some suspension of belief. This book requires suspension of intelligence.
Rating:
Summary: Great Science Fiction
Review: I couldn't put the book down until it was finished. As stated by Mr. Wyman, Science Fiction is FICTION! Get a grip! If you don't have an imagination and open mind you shouldn't be reading any of this! Science Fiction isn't intended to set forth a thesis, it's here to entertain and James Hogan did exactly that! James - great writing as always! Thanks and keep it coming.
Rating:
Summary: Odd new slant does not make it a bad book
Review: I read this book and I liked it, so I figured I should rate it. Then I read some of the reviews and felt obligated to write a review. First things first, this novel is science fiction (key word there FICTION.) Many of these reviewers are spouting off that everything put forth in this book is flat out impossible. Isn't it just as impossible for dinosaurs to be cloned, robots to be constrained by "laws" to make them like humans, people to travel through time, the souls of the dead returning to posses people in the future? Don't be so narrow minded as to think that just because an author writes about something that they are preaching about it. Hogan used Velikovsky's ideas to create an entertaining read, he is not trying to debunk popular theory and convert readers. Something else to think about, Darwin, Gallaleo, Einstein, any "founder" of some scientific belief that we readily accept today was often times decried as a heritic, a fool and a nutjob when they first put forth their ideas. Don't be so simple as to think it couldn't happen again. So if you read this book, read it as a form of entertainment and put your biases behind you. If you spend all your life trying to find wrong everywhere you look you just look stupid.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, predictable, unbelievable
Review: I'm a huge Hogan fan but found this title to be a huge disappointment. Maybe I'm burned out on Hogan but I could almost predict what was going to happen next in the story. Free thinking scientist is the hero, evil goverment/corporate scientist is the villian. Totally wild ideas are introduced, the Earth orbiting Saturn during the dinosaur age and thus reducing the Earth's gravity? A proto planet just barely scraping Earth in orbit? I know James is in contact with many scientist buddies which makes his books believable but I think he needs someone to tutor him on orbital mechanics, the ideas here are a joke. Oh well maybe I'll go back and read some of his classics again.
Rating:
Summary: Good concept disappointingly executed
Review: I'm been a huge Hogan fan since the Giant novels, but this book was a disappointment in numerous ways. The first part of the book is basically "honest hardworking engineer/scientists find the Truth, but shifty prestige-oriented Establishment academic politician/scientists refuse to recognize it". This part drags on far too long, is far too "talky", and introduces far too many minor characters. Much time is spent on long, snooze-inducing dialog sequences while the characters discuss various scientific concepts. Only the protagonist Landon Keene is portrayed with enough depth that he becomes anything beyond one-dimensional. The vast majority of names on the excessively long "cast of characters" are just that - names on the page with minimal characterization. By the way, with all these characters the least he could have given us was an Army private named Kowalski. In the second part of the book, the book becomes "small band of travelers desperately trying to reach their goal, overcoming assorted obstacles along the way". Like an Irwin Allen disaster movie, we're supposed to care about what happens to both the characters introduced in the first part as well as various new minor characters briefly introduced before they encounter their fate. This works perhaps for Allen, but not for Hogan. More tiresome are the various devices that Hogan uses. The Robin character with his dinosaurs, the Herbert antagonist character being married to Keene's ex-wife, the stone tablets from Rhea, the "trial scene", so on and so forth. I had many believability problems with these things. My final problem with the book is the connection Hogan sees between the societal structures of Earth and Kronia and their science. Earth society is profit based and Kronia's is individual-contribution based; Earth's science is "don't rock the boat" and Kronia's is "truth follows observation", for lack of a better phrase. The Keene character concludes that because Kronia's science is superior their society is thus also superior. I thought the whole societal aspects of this novel a distracting sideshow. I would have preferred more science, in the tradition I've come to really like about Hogan novels.
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