The Face on Mars

Rating:
Summary: Lacking...
Review: From the other reviews on this book, you would think it's a serious study on the face. It isn't, it's a novel, set in the year 2040, with the idea of the face on Mars as a backdrop. While the face makes a great plot device (witness the recent movie, Mission to Mars), it isn't used to good effect here. In the author's preface, he states that he seeks to inform as well as entertain, by making a half-hearted attempt to do both, he actually manages to do neither. The book is under two hundred pages, but feels much longer. Characters aren't developed, the plot is neither suspenseful or engaging, and the writer too often makes the novice mistake of too often telling us, rather than showing us, the action. To be fair, Allen obviously has a lot of interest in outer space, but his 'research' comes across as simple opinions, like a learned professor out to teach the rest of us. Some of those opinions are not only outspoken, but even irritating, such as his theory that the Big Bang never happened, without even offering any viable alternative as to what else could have created the universe in the first place. According to the author, the poor Martian civilization in the book didn't even create it's own culture. I won't go on about that, though, because I wouldn't want to ruin the suspense...

This book could have more ably accomplished all it's goals by simply making itself a more entertaining read. People tend to believe the information imparted in the movie JFK because it was presented so skillfully. If the author would have used the typical structure any novelist uses when building up his story, it would have at least been entertaining, as it is this book reads more like a bad science paper.

Rating:
Summary: Lacking...
Review: From the other reviews on this book, you would think it's a serious study on the face. It isn't, it's a novel, set in the year 2040, with the idea of the face on Mars as a backdrop. While the face makes a great plot device (witness the recent movie, Mission to Mars), it isn't used to good effect here. In the author's preface, he states that he seeks to inform as well as entertain, by making a half-hearted attempt to do both, he actually manages to do neither. The book is under two hundred pages, but feels much longer. Characters aren't developed, the plot is neither suspenseful or engaging, and the writer too often makes the novice mistake of too often telling us, rather than showing us, the action. To be fair, Allen obviously has a lot of interest in outer space, but his 'research' comes across as simple opinions, like a learned professor out to teach the rest of us. Some of those opinions are not only outspoken, but even irritating, such as his theory that the Big Bang never happened, without even offering any viable alternative as to what else could have created the universe in the first place. According to the author, the poor Martian civilization in the book didn't even create it's own culture. I won't go on about that, though, because I wouldn't want to ruin the suspense...

This book could have more ably accomplished all it's goals by simply making itself a more entertaining read. People tend to believe the information imparted in the movie JFK because it was presented so skillfully. If the author would have used the typical structure any novelist uses when building up his story, it would have at least been entertaining, as it is this book reads more like a bad science paper.

Rating:
Summary: Amazingly self-important!
Review: It seemed to me that Harold W. G. Allen simply needed an excuse to expound his philosophical ideas, and used this as a vehicle. The book is filled with unbelievable characters who have nothing better to do than listen at the feet of this amazingly self-important professor (obviously Harold Allen's mouthpiece) as he lets the reader know what he thinks is wrong with this world and how he could make everything just lovely.
Allen has obviously done zero research into the face on Mars, for he utterly fails to mention the other anomalous features nearby. He also fails to mention why NASA has denied the existence of the face for so many years, and then suddenly mounts an expedition to the Cydonia region with the face as one of its main objectives.
Overall: one of the poorest books I have ever read. If you are interested in the face and want some fiction about it, ignore this piece of nonsense and try to track down Allen Steele's "Labyrinth of Night."

Rating:
Summary: Dissappointing
Review: The book was loaded with complicated math formulas & the philosophy sections where just impossible to follow. There were about 50 pages where they actually researched the "face" that was interesting. All in All - a huge let down...