The Engines of Dawn

Rating:
Summary: Slight space opera
Review: ...Engines of Dawn is fun, but is nothing to write home about. Characters are flat if likeable, plenty of cliches are trotted out, and the sexual innuendo is a bit forced. Also, if you're paying attention you'll guess the big secret about halfway through. Having said that, it is quick and something of a page-turner toward the end. Also, a touch I particularly liked is that many starships are named after porno actresses...

Rating:
Summary: Unimaginative, undeveloped, with 2-D characters.
Review:

First of all, this novel should have been a short story, where P. Cook would hand over his idea to someone who can actually write.

The characters are either extremely cliche or have no more than two personality traits. The space travel is based on bogus science that doesn't even seem plausible (I know this is a sci-fi novel, but many authors have succeeded at presenting a scientific world which makes some sort of sense) in order to finish up to a predictable punchline. The aliens are either too mysterious to be described at all or are not interesting enough to actually read their descriptions. The world that is found by the explorers is exactly the same as earth - which leaves me with a question: why read sci-fi if I am to find at best a skewed description of my real world?

I usually like novels dealing with space travel and exploration of new worlds and civilizations, but unfortunately, despite the amount of effort I put into giving this book a chance, I cannot say I like it at all. The style is extremely choppy, things that happen are not explained at all or explained too much, certain characters are not necessary, and the plot doesn't really develop into anything. You read the back of the book and you know everything you'd like to know about this novel.

It almost appears that this novel was written as a description of a grade B sci-fi movie the author could have watched once. Unfortunately, the methods used to convey emotions, character traits, plot, and the mood are not always to be translated into the written form. I wish the author better luck next time. It would really help if he did some sort of research for his book, e.g. come up with plausible technology, make at least outlines for believable characters, and come up with a plot that would drive the novel to some extent.

I do not recommend this book to anyone - it'll leave you with a bad taste in your mouth and possibly spoil the fun of sci-fi for you.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: A star-borne University, with an alien race and religious infighting.

Hardly seems like the best premise for an action novel. You'd expect a bit more of a politicial thriller.

Fortunately, this is a rocking action novel. The type is a bit bigger than normal, so you can easily zip through this book. The fact that it is clearly written, and flows well from event to event only heightens the speed.

The downside is that reading as quickly as I did, I sometimes got a bit confused on which faction was in favor of what. Luckily, the alliances were straightforward enough, until they weren't. And I had sorted out the main factions by then.

The only downside, if this is a downside, is that the main character is obsessed with female breasts. Not that this is a bad thing, but having a detailed analysis of that feature of each female character for the first 50 or so pages did begin to wear. Luckily, by that point, things were happening, so it became a non-topic until the denoument.

It seems that some of the other reviewers were not taking into account the perspective of the novel while reading. While the political infighting seems minor next to the threat to humanity from the Enamorati Compact, no one outside of a half dozen characters fully understands the threat, and so it does not influence their actions. This is actually a plus to the novel, as agendas are advanced in ignorance. Only the reader can understand how the big picture fits together - and that knowledge is incomplete.

Of course, as befits a good action novel, the good guys win, the bad guys get beaten for being stupid and lose to boot. Girl beds boy and all are happy.

Obviously, this is not a novel that plumbs deep intellectual depths. It is suprisingly well thought out for a "simple action novel", and represents some of the best entertaining science fiction that one can read.

Enough fluff for entertainment, and enough meat for thinking. A good balance, and a book and author destined for my must read chart.

Rating:
Summary: Not great, not even good.
Review: Although I wouldn't have expressed it with the same degree of vehemence, many of the 1 and 2 star reviews already here do highlight the problems I have with this book. I am very surprised to see it rated so highly be so many. It does demonstrate some clever ideas and has a few compelling moments, but overall I was very disappointed. The writing doesn't come across well and the characters are not presented with any sort of depth or believability. It's a basic requirement of any good story that you find something in at least some of the characters that you can either identify with or want to know more about, and that's completely lacking here. The author also does a lot of things that are a slap in the face of willing suspension of disbelief (naming all the starships after porn actresses, for example). That sort of deliberate choice doesn't help you buy into the story.

If you are curious about this book, find a copy from someone or stop by a bookstore and read the first 3 pages. They pretty much establish the quality of the writing and overall tone for the whole book. If you don't like that much of it, you probably won't like any of it.

Rating:
Summary: Light, Weak, but slightly entertaining novel
Review: I was first struck by how awful this book was. Very thin reading, no depth of character, trite metaphors, the whole nine yards.

What saves the book however, is that the pace actually picks up and makes for a half fun (I didnt say "interesting", mind you) read.

Also, its small enough that finishing it in a day is a breeze. So youve had your light reading, and youre ready to move on to better books afterwards.

It's kind of a shame the book was as bad as it was, but I can't exactly remember why I bought it.

-2 stars for not being any good, but 2 stars for relatively short period of pain, and 1 star for fun.

Buy it used.

Rating:
Summary: Animal House Saves the Universe
Review: In the Engines of Dawn by Paul Cook, frat boy-cum-physics-instructor Ben Bennett and his three drop-out buddies liberate humanity from the evil aliens slowly, methodically, sapping all humans of their intelligence and sex drive.

I'd give the actual story concept at least 3 stars, but the execution is terrible. For some reason, Cook has to give every character a complete dossier after mentioning their name. For instance: Bob Jones, a large, muscular, redheaded man, turned on the lights. Childish sexual innuendo is all over the place, really distracting from the seriousness of the story.

Don't get me wrong, this book can be entertaining, in that cheezy, late night B-movie kind of way, but if you want thought-provoking literature, don't waste any time with the Engines of Dawn.

Rating:
Summary: Worth a read
Review: Ok, so it's not a grand classic of sci-fi, but it's a fun quick read. Some of the reader reviews above have some valid points but are unnecessarily harsh. I recently read Hamilton's space opera, so I couldn't expect it to compare, but it has enough suspense and some interesting twists and light comedy with enough future astrophysics to satisfy most sci-fi readers.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Review: Ok, so the plot has some holes you could drive a space cruiser through, and the delivery is a bit chaotic. Still, I cannot in conscience give this book anything less than five stars. It's basic _premise_ is sound, and the story engaging.

What really does for me in this book is seeing man face a mortal enemy, who could well turn into the species nemesis, and having as main obstacle their own political infighting and quest for power. _That_ is rendered perfectly in this book.

Also, I must admit that the university background setting is familiar and comfortable to me. It's not every time humanity is saved in a university campus, and very rarely as convincingly as in this book. :-)

If you are put off by plot holes, stay away from this one. If the way personal agendas and egos can get in the way of our own good does it for you, though, this book is for you.

Rating:
Summary: Weak
Review: The basic premise of this novel is promising, and could form the core of a well-crafted and absorbing book. Unfortunately, "The Engines of Dawn" is not that book.

The writing is often awkward and cliche-ridden ("He sported a black mustache of military smartness, and his snappy gray tunic had nary a crease"), and the characters are largely cardboard cut-outs, their actions and emotions changing from moment to moment according to the demands of the plot rather than any plausible inner motivation.

The editors seem to have skipped the continuity-checking phase, and problems abound. In the book's first pages we are told that the characters' clothing is a smart nanotech construct that can be made to flow on and off of their bodies at will. But that fact is never mentioned again, and by the end of the book we have someone in "a torn tunic". While orbiting a planet, someone mentions casually that because of the topography there are probably "surface winds in excess of two hundred miles an hour"; but when they go down to the surface they take no precautions against such winds, there are in fact no such winds, and no one comments on the fact. On one page we are told that there are only four known Earthlike planets; later we are told that a particular kind of ivy is found on "a number of worlds". And so on. Much of the technology is quite implausible also.

More seriously, the books' basic plot device is equally shaky: a Good Alien has an important secret that the humans must know, so he concocts an elaborate, dangerous, and utterly implausible plot to strand their ship in space in hopes that they will take refuge on and explore a word that contains vague hints about the truth (hints that, as far as the alien could have known, were utterly unlikely to actually reveal the truth to the humans). Rather than, say, writing the secret down and slipping it under someone's door.

Which isn't to say that it's a totally awful book. The awkward writing was only irritating, and I was interested enough in what the big secret was that I stayed up late last night to finish it. But there are lots and lots of better books out there...

Rating:
Summary: Fun read!
Review: This is what people might call "a light novel". It's not too deep, but it has a very engaging story. At times, I found I couldn't stop reading despite late hour and lack of sleep :) It has some interesting ideas, and it's written to the point with not too much long and boring background. As for the bad reviews it got? I can't argue with them, the book has its bad points (again - not too deep, very thin character development), but if you don't expect to read a masterpiece, and are just looking for a few hours of enjoyable reading, this book should be very satisfying!