Rating: 
Summary: Good science FICTION: More character than technology
Review: The best things about this book are the main character and the spacer culture. I wanted Thiadora Murphy to come through. I found her self exploration and development believable and engrossing. The best part of the book is the end, which I will not spoil. Suffice it to say that my parting thought was: "Hey! This woman really doesn't think like me!". The author's ability to convey such a difference in psychology is a testament to her skill: because the book is ultimately about a culture of people adapted to zero gee.
I enjoyed learning about that spacebound culture immensely. Ms. Mitchell approaches the topics of human space habitation from a refreshing perspective. Very few people speak believably about the poor and destitute in science ficiton. It is sometimes assumed that there simply won't be any. CJ Cherryh and J. Michael Straczynski are the only other sci-fi writers that I can think of to present this side of the future. Ms. Mitchell doesn't flinch to give us stale, musty, sweaty spacecraft crewed by tightly night communities of highly adapted people.
Persons who dislike the author's science should note the boldface above. The technology is used to establish a setting for the culture and character. I've been interviewing people and reading technical journals on fission and fusion drive research for six years and I work in the nuclear fission field. Ms. Mitchell has integrated a number of different real world propulsion concepts to make her setting believable while simultaneously keeping her story firmly grounded in character. She also throws in a good old fashioned inertialess drive for flavor which is fun to play with. While I might disagree with several of the author's assumptions about how the spaceflight that our present physics can predict will work(detection ranges and magnitudes of accelerations, mostly) the key point is that her world is internally consistent and a whole lot of fun! She even has an original twist on the faster than light drive that never bogging the reader down in annoying details as to how it works.
I did have one issue with the story. The end seemed to come and go pretty quickly. This meant that a few characters went through some major trauma in very short spans of time and I felt a bit rushed. This doesn't kill the story for me, but a bit more exposition on a few secondary characters would have made me buy their changes more. Overall, I recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad Writing
Review: The plot in this book is extremely weak, contrived and unbelievable. The writing is poor, and the lack of editing shows contempt for readers. The reviewer who characterized this as written for the 9 - 12 year old crowd hit it on the mark, except I would not want my children to believe this poor writing is an example of good science fiction.The characterization of the heroine is average, but most other characters are stereotypes and less than one-dimensional. The blond leonine haired accomplice of the heroine waffles between incredible naivety and ignorance, which is utterly inconsistent with the history that the book gives him. The commandant of the heroine's academy is a black hearted bigot, yet one who did little or nothing effective to block her previous six years in the academy. He again shows up, entirely gratuitously, in a subsequent space battle. Most elements of the plot are contrived and silly on many levels. For example, the "floater" society after a hundred years in space suddenly realizes, on the basis of essentially an email, that it could incorporate and obtain a part of control of galactic government - and with little further ado the government grants this, even though the entire theme of the book is that the floaters are hated and discriminated against. The notion of an advance race of colonists who discover time travel is pure drivel. Plot devices appear and disappear with no continuity. One of the heroine's accomplices notes in passing that he was a leader in developing genocidal bioweapons. Apparently hundreds of thousands of people have died from this, but the concept is thrown into the plot and then disappears. Same for the advnced human race with extraordinary science who appear and disappear in the space of a few paragraphs. Incredible coincidences are thrown around like popcorn - almost all air and no substance. In the end, this is an extremely weak book. I threw it away rather than give it to charity. I was most inspired to write this review, the first I ever have attempted despite reading hundreds of other Amazon books, upon reading that the cover blurb was written without attribution by the author's spouse. This is a scandal.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably bad
Review: This book is unbelievably bad on a number of levels. The characters are unbelievably immature, the plot is unbelievably coincidental, and the villain is unbelievably evil. "Murphy's Gambit" is written with all the sophistication of a "young reader" book. It kept reminding me of the Jedi Apprentice series, complete with an overabundance of exclamation points, only those books are deliberately written for 9-12 year olds. This book, however, was ostensibly written for adults. The description of life in zero-gee is interesting, if sexist, but it's not enough to save this book. And nine as a prime number? If this woman really has a master's degree in solid-state physics, the university should revoke it.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably bad
Review: This book is unbelievably bad on a number of levels. The characters are unbelievably immature, the plot is unbelievably coincidental, and the villain is unbelievably evil. "Murphy's Gambit" is written with all the sophistication of a "young reader" book. It kept reminding me of the Jedi Apprentice series, complete with an overabundance of exclamation points, only those books are deliberately written for 9-12 year olds. This book, however, was ostensibly written for adults. The description of life in zero-gee is interesting, if sexist, but it's not enough to save this book. And nine as a prime number? If this woman really has a master's degree in solid-state physics, the university should revoke it.
Rating:
Summary: Kinda different from all the rest
Review: This book was intriguing enough to make me buy another from the author. I have read probably 500 science fiction books and I think this one had some worthwhile ideas.
I loved the idea of floater culture and grounders described in a believeable way. I always wondered how that would work out in real life. I love the fact that she doesn't end up with the man at the end. I love the plastic reshaping prison cells. I'm not quite sure I buy the whole 13th seat in the collective, but I was hoping for some illumination in a sequel.
Don't believe all you read from other commentors. This book was not formulaic, I couldn't put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Less Than I Expected
Review: This book was something of a disappointment. The author had a great idea -- an entirely disenfranchised culture of people who live in space -- but the author did little with it. Granted, this was the author's first foray into writing a full-length science fiction novel, so someone's first try at something shouldn't be shot down completely. Nonetheless, the author could have done so much MORE with this concept. To start, she could have, and indeed should have, fleshed out this novel much more...being a bit more descriptive about the characters' environs as well as the characters' themselves would have gone a long way. Also, the author's consistency could use some work...in the first third of the book the main character gets her ankle hurt and while we do occassionally hear about the pain she's in...there are several times farther along in the story where she could have gotten at least some kind of cursory medical attention...but doesn't...like the author forgot about that thread of the story. But oddly enough it was a couple of small details about this book that bothered me the most. First, the main characater's home system encircles the star Formalhaut...there is NO star Formalhaut...the star's name is FOMALHAUT -- no "R". And the second little thing that bugged me was a reference toward the end of the book about "intergalactic" trade or travel (I don't remember which). The word "intergalactic" means between galaxies, there is no travel between galaxies in the book, just travel within this one...what the author should have said was "interstellar"...which means between stars, which does happen in the book. I know the above points are minor...I can forgive a weakly written story...but when someone screws up little details it really irks me. Overall, despite the fact that this is the author's first attempt at a scifi novel, this book could have been so much better (and if the author ever decides to rewrite things from a different angle later on in her career I would certainly read that story). This book is really best read in the early teen years and should be relegated to the Young Adult section of either your library or bookstore. For ages 9-14 this book is definitely recommended (but not before a book like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game)...for anyone beyond their early to mid-teens, this book is only worth recommending if you've got nothing else to read, want to get a taste of what your kids are reading, or are a really die-hard scifi fan.
Rating:
Summary: Less Than I Expected
Review: This book was something of a disappointment. The author had a great idea -- an entirely disenfranchised culture of people who live in space -- but the author did little with it. Granted, this was the author's first foray into writing a full-length science fiction novel, so someone's first try at something shouldn't be shot down completely. Nonetheless, the author could have done so much MORE with this concept. To start, she could have, and indeed should have, fleshed out this novel much more...being a bit more descriptive about the characters' environs as well as the characters' themselves would have gone a long way. Also, the author's consistency could use some work...in the first third of the book the main character gets her ankle hurt and while we do occassionally hear about the pain she's in...there are several times farther along in the story where she could have gotten at least some kind of cursory medical attention...but doesn't...like the author forgot about that thread of the story. But oddly enough it was a couple of small details about this book that bothered me the most. First, the main characater's home system encircles the star Formalhaut...there is NO star Formalhaut...the star's name is FOMALHAUT -- no "R". And the second little thing that bugged me was a reference toward the end of the book about "intergalactic" trade or travel (I don't remember which). The word "intergalactic" means between galaxies, there is no travel between galaxies in the book, just travel within this one...what the author should have said was "interstellar"...which means between stars, which does happen in the book. I know the above points are minor...I can forgive a weakly written story...but when someone screws up little details it really irks me. Overall, despite the fact that this is the author's first attempt at a scifi novel, this book could have been so much better (and if the author ever decides to rewrite things from a different angle later on in her career I would certainly read that story). This book is really best read in the early teen years and should be relegated to the Young Adult section of either your library or bookstore. For ages 9-14 this book is definitely recommended (but not before a book like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game)...for anyone beyond their early to mid-teens, this book is only worth recommending if you've got nothing else to read, want to get a taste of what your kids are reading, or are a really die-hard scifi fan.
Rating: 
Summary: A GREAT DEBUT NOVEL!
Review: This is a fast-paced story with a great protagonist. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. You'll find yourself rooting for Murphy even as everyone tries to bring her down. The realistic sci-fi world was nicely balanced with down-to-earth problems. The ending left me hopeful that Murphy will be undertaking another journey soon.
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