The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Very mixed reviews. Some great, many very bad. I decided to call it a day after about 150 pages, 15% into the book.
I found Amber offensive and very uneven. One minute she was fairly simple and the next moment she had all the answers and knew better. One moment she was overly aggressive, the next she was a meek doormat. None of this was in any way cohesive or written in a believable manner.
Then there were some sexual come-ons that left me flabbergasted, because they came completely out of the left field, were weirdly formulated and made no sense. Prime example:
“When the lights go out, things are going to get a lot worse. I was really starting to hope you’d stick around because I’m going to need someone to roll around with if I’m going to get any sleep tonight.”
I actually had to backtrack and read that again to wrap my head around it. Seriously?
Scott, the one-dimensional cardboard cut-out, was completely without depth. Or brain cells.
Alien reptile guy could have worked, if there had been more to him than arrogance and deep breathing to control his rage. Ok, yes, also very rapey. Still, even that could have worked in the context of the book and the alien culture. But the storytelling was just so flat and dry, none of the writing really did it for me. I just felt alternatively annoyed, slightly bored and stunned. Lots of eye rolling.
Good thing I got this for free. The prospect of reading another 900 pages of this holds no appeal.
Cathy's Reading Bonanza 