I received a free copy of this in exchange for my honest review.
My Review: Readers of techno-thrillers are fully aware that sometimes you have to suspend technological judgment (or the lack thereof) for the enjoyment of reading. There is, of course, the assumption that the technology will be explained well enough that it’s somewhat believable. That maybe in a decade or so or maybe in some governmental laboratory the kind of technology exists and therefore it’s okay to suspend judgment. That was my first question about this book. The actual “mountain place of knowledge” is kind of a confusing place. Now, admittedly, I’m not really one for sci-fi, so different colored buttons in mountains and ethereal people that float around in a netherspace giving advice may be a little bit outside of my realm of belief, but I think that aside from that, I was actually a little confused.
The way the book started out, I thought it was going to
give me a little more explanation to ease my, uh, unease, but that was not to
be. To be fair, this is the first book in a series, so maybe that will come
later? I don’t know. Sometimes books are confusing on purpose so that you can
follow along with the characters who are also confused, but I’m not totally
convinced that was the deal for this book. I think I was just a little bit
confused. I can see that the author had a clear course mapped out for what was
happening and what was supposed to be, and so I think what happened is that he
had ideas that were well developed and fleshed out but he was so used to
thinking about them and they had become so much a part of him that maybe they
were not explained as well to those of us who were not the inventors of the
idea.
This book took me a long time to read, despite the fact
that it actually moves quite quickly. The chapters are short and lots of stuff is
happening, so it’s not like it’s boring or anything. It’s just a long book.
Also, there are lots of characters and because the book was long, sometimes it
was hard to keep track of someone that I met a long time ago in the reading.
Overall, I thought the book had some pretty interesting
ideas. I liked the idea that although the Mountain Place of Knowledge is kind
of a far-fetched discovery, there were some very interesting things about it
and the author involved a lot of scientists who were researching it so that
alone allows for some explanation as the scientists discover different
things. There are a lot of things
happening, too, so there is always the hope that in the next book, things
really take off and get going after the basic descriptions and characters have
been introduced.
My rating: 2.5
stars
For the sensitive
reader: There is some language in this book, but I think it is milder than in
others from this genre.
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