Achilles' Choice

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother with Achilles' Choice.
Review: Achilles' Choice delves into a future evolution of the Olympics in which life is the ticket to enter. This extreme development of sports is expressed through the people most involved--the athletes. The characters , especially Jillian Shomer, are magnificently expressed in their actions and thoughts. The reader can easily feel the heated struggle of competition and the agony over moral and life dilemmas faced by Jullian. Furthermore, these future competitors are extremely applicable to today's athletes, and connect the reader to the harsh life and choices these talented people face. A great read.

Rating:
Summary: A classic tale of future sport mania and the athletes.
Review: Achilles' Choice delves into a future evolution of the Olympics in which life is the ticket to enter. This extreme development of sports is expressed through the people most involved--the athletes. The characters , especially Jillian Shomer, are magnificently expressed in their actions and thoughts. The reader can easily feel the heated struggle of competition and the agony over moral and life dilemmas faced by Jullian. Furthermore, these future competitors are extremely applicable to today's athletes, and connect the reader to the harsh life and choices these talented people face. A great read.

Rating:
Summary: Not Typical Niven
Review: Larry Niven (and his co-authors) usually write something either memorable or entertaining. ACHILLES CHOICE is neither. The authors (three of them!) reach hard to impress the reader by mixing references to the current "exciting" mass appeal physics of Chaos Theory. They then proceed to make flat characters behave in ways that no one with any experience would believe they would act. Not very typical Niven - not very good. Two stars because you CAN read the whole thing.

Rating:
Summary: Good idea, weak follow through
Review: Reading Larry Niven's thoughts on the publishing world in "Playgrounds of the Mind" and "N Space" gives a good insight into why this book was published: simply to fulfill a contract. As usual, the concept is very strong. The story develops nicely and then ends in mid-thought. As an avowed Larry Niven fan, I was extremely disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: A swing and a miss
Review: This book reads like something out of a freshman creative writing class. The dialogue is stilted, the plot is predictable, and the characters are utterly flat.

Skip it - there are plenty of other good books by these authors.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: This book reads like something out of a freshman creative writing class. The dialogue is stilted, the plot is predictable, and the characters are utterly flat.

Skip it - there are plenty of other good books by these authors.

Rating:
Summary: Achilles Choice - Personal Choice
Review: This novel is about love, life and sport. Based on a future Olympics where not only physical perfection is required but also extreme intelligence. It is a story where the nobel prize is inspired by elite athletes, and practical meets theoretical. It is a story of choices. Choose wrong and you may die. Either way you need to be fully committed to your descisions. If you are going to aim high in life then this is where you would be.

Achilles Choice was a light but enjoyable read. I am looking forward to a sequel.

I would recommend this novel for the age group 8-22 years of age. If you are an older reader the predictability of the storyline may be discouraging.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother with Achilles' Choice.
Review: This story follows a young athlete as she trains for the new Olympics, which include intellectual competition and a de facto death sentence for the those who fail to take the gold. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Ah, well. I have read of number of Larry Niven novels, and I understand the premise that maybe a book can be just a ripping good adventure, and not a contribution to world lit. But, ack, this was horrible. You will find the characters cliched, the plot "twists" too easy to figure out, and the ending is either a cop out because the author had filled the requisit number of pages, or a cheap way to prep for a sequel.