Review: Saturn Returns
Nov. 11th, 2007 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgThis afternoon I finished Sean Williams' Saturn Returns. As I write this I have not read any other reviews. Unfortunately the news is not good, and I have recorded some observations here. I make no claims to this being a "proper" review, but the book fails in many fundamental ways. I am inspired by disappointment rather than the joy of the rant.
I am a great fan of The Resurrected Man. I thought it was one of the best detective/SF genre crossovers I've ever read. I like space opera, and while I expressed early concern about the heavy post-humanist setting of Saturn Returns, Sean himself assured me that he'd put a great deal of effort into making the characters as human as possible. He also offered me Haigh's chocolates in exchange for a favourable review which I took at the time to be light-hearted banter, but now I'm not so sure.
For it was Bad. In many ways.
On the universe
What there was of the universe was acceptably constructed, and I was reasonably satisfied with the treatment of time and communications. In the absence of anthropology or sociology I could have used a bit more technology. I really couldn't figure out the economics.
The sundry post-human forms were OK.
So, the background was OK but unremarkable and failed to make a significant contribution.
On narrative
The hero awakes with amnesia. An oldie but a goodie and I have no problem with that. The male hero waking up in a woman's body was similarly traditional, but I felt it was handled clumsily, particularly in this post-human future.
Unfortunately the bulk of the storytelling is expressed in spontaneous and fragmentary flashbacks embedded in long expository speeches as the secondary characters bring the hero up to speed. This meant that most of the action in the present consisted of either the hero lying in his bunk trying to remember things, or everyone sitting around talking. The entire "story" amounted to not much more than "getting the band back together" and it dragged.
The odd moments of present-day action were a relief, but were sadly few and far between.
The background conspiracy interested me not at all. New players were introduced by the simple expedient of dropping their names into the narrative at various moments, with no clues as to their meaning. Extreme rosebudism perhaps.
While I appreciated the frequent "previously, in Saturn Returns" summaries as the hero contemplated his collection of data scraps, these consisted of little more than increasingly lengthy lists of keywords with minimal connections. As with the characters, there wasn't enough information to allow me to care about any of the groups.
I found the shift in POV as each character recited tales a bit disorienting because there was rarely enough difference between the characters to help me remember who was talking. Not that it mattered.
On character
I failed to bond with any of the characters in this work. At best they seemed like robots. I failed to believe that any of them were soldiers, let alone former team mates from an elite special ops squad. There was no evidence of bonding, cameraderie, care or humour. Short exchanges identified in the text as "banter" amounted to no more than "pass the salt". No black humour, no irony, or sarcasm.
The gabblings of the incarcerated and insane last member of the group failed to build character or advance the narrative and held no interest for me.
I finished the book with a sense of relief that it was over, combined with irritation at the lack of closure for the few bits of openage I managed to extract from the work. I shall not be reading the sequals.
Having written as much as I have the energy for this hot evening, I thought I'd take a look at the other reviews out there. It appears my opinions are not those of others. It happens.
Your thoughts, flist?
I am a great fan of The Resurrected Man. I thought it was one of the best detective/SF genre crossovers I've ever read. I like space opera, and while I expressed early concern about the heavy post-humanist setting of Saturn Returns, Sean himself assured me that he'd put a great deal of effort into making the characters as human as possible. He also offered me Haigh's chocolates in exchange for a favourable review which I took at the time to be light-hearted banter, but now I'm not so sure.
For it was Bad. In many ways.
On the universe
What there was of the universe was acceptably constructed, and I was reasonably satisfied with the treatment of time and communications. In the absence of anthropology or sociology I could have used a bit more technology. I really couldn't figure out the economics.
The sundry post-human forms were OK.
So, the background was OK but unremarkable and failed to make a significant contribution.
On narrative
The hero awakes with amnesia. An oldie but a goodie and I have no problem with that. The male hero waking up in a woman's body was similarly traditional, but I felt it was handled clumsily, particularly in this post-human future.
Unfortunately the bulk of the storytelling is expressed in spontaneous and fragmentary flashbacks embedded in long expository speeches as the secondary characters bring the hero up to speed. This meant that most of the action in the present consisted of either the hero lying in his bunk trying to remember things, or everyone sitting around talking. The entire "story" amounted to not much more than "getting the band back together" and it dragged.
The odd moments of present-day action were a relief, but were sadly few and far between.
The background conspiracy interested me not at all. New players were introduced by the simple expedient of dropping their names into the narrative at various moments, with no clues as to their meaning. Extreme rosebudism perhaps.
While I appreciated the frequent "previously, in Saturn Returns" summaries as the hero contemplated his collection of data scraps, these consisted of little more than increasingly lengthy lists of keywords with minimal connections. As with the characters, there wasn't enough information to allow me to care about any of the groups.
I found the shift in POV as each character recited tales a bit disorienting because there was rarely enough difference between the characters to help me remember who was talking. Not that it mattered.
On character
I failed to bond with any of the characters in this work. At best they seemed like robots. I failed to believe that any of them were soldiers, let alone former team mates from an elite special ops squad. There was no evidence of bonding, cameraderie, care or humour. Short exchanges identified in the text as "banter" amounted to no more than "pass the salt". No black humour, no irony, or sarcasm.
The gabblings of the incarcerated and insane last member of the group failed to build character or advance the narrative and held no interest for me.
I finished the book with a sense of relief that it was over, combined with irritation at the lack of closure for the few bits of openage I managed to extract from the work. I shall not be reading the sequals.
Having written as much as I have the energy for this hot evening, I thought I'd take a look at the other reviews out there. It appears my opinions are not those of others. It happens.
Your thoughts, flist?
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-11 02:42 pm (UTC)I found the world didn't ring true to me, the way time passing was treated was very odd. But I mostly excused this as consciously gothic (in the literary sense, not the sub-cultural ie Melmoth).
I found the hero at least somewhat unlikable, but it was also clear that he was supposed to be.
I liked that Sean was stretching himself a bit.
Oh, and the gabbling crazy character - I guess I new the joke on this one before I started the book, so I found it amusing from the start.