Abby Goldsmith

Utopian future after dystopian present

Revisado: 01-05-24

Four astronauts and their personal AIs escape the restrictive laws of Earth and set out to meet aliens and found galactic empires. Empowering! I hope that’s where our future is headed.

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High Octane Bond + Bladerunner Meld

Revisado: 12-03-17

There's a lot of gun violence, other violence, sex, and plot twists packed into a very short book, so if any of that offends you, be prepared. The writing is fast-paced and masterful, and the dialogue and characters are interesting. Narrator is well-chosen.

My only criticism is that this book is geared to a very specific audience, and I'm not quite it. I tend to like stories with originality; things that I've never seen before. This one will appeal to fans of James Bond and Bladerunner, I think.

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Solidly entertaining

Revisado: 02-01-17

If you're looking for fast-paced escapism for 2 hours, this'll do it. The SF concept may not be scientifically explained, but it's a good story, well paced, well told, and well wrapped up. Zachary Quinto is a perfect narrator for this type of character.

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Don't Judge This One By Its Cover

Revisado: 01-06-17

This book explores domination/subordination in a light-hearted way, there is some truly brilliant dialogue, and it also teaches you about dinosaurs. It's not your typical rah-rah-brah testosterone fueled sci-fi, despite the pulpy cover. There is enough action to oversaturate a Michael Bay film, and there are cavemen and sexy princesses and high tech powersuits and, yes, a tyrannosaurus rex on a rampage during a stormy battle scene. And time travel. But come on, those things are all necessary to the story. They really are!

You know an author's got amazing talent when they can tie all of those elements together into a coherent story that's satisfying and fun to read.

The narrator does a good job, but it took me a while to get used to his deadpan delivery. I like how he read the main characters' voices.

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Inspiring and Accurate

Revisado: 09-28-16

Very well-written. The subject matter might not hold everyone's interest, and the ratio of scientific explanations to coverage of personal interaction is about 50:50. Read it if you're interested in the invention of the MRI, or if you're interested in the atmosphere of competition in the medical science field during the 1970s, or if you like inspiring success stories that involve oddball people. I'm related to someone who was on the original FONAR team. Based on my knowledge of events, the subject was researched in-depth, and the personal quotes and anecdotes sound accurate to me.

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Fast-Paced Action, Lacking in Depth

Revisado: 08-19-16

This is a fast-paced novel, with a great performance by the narrator. However, I found that the characters had murky motives. While I like the idea of two opposed warlords secretly and respecting each other's ideologies, their reasoning never convinced me. Just about every major character in this novel switches sides at the drop of a hat. They might as well be playing paintball instead of fighting for moral reasons. None of them seem to think deeply at all about why they're fighting, or why they believe what they believe. As a result, they're not compelling to read about.

The whole enslavement of humanity was never explained. How does La Pax work? People make millions of choices every day. If the drones are going to wipe themselves after using a toilet, or avoid slamming into walls while they walk, then they'd need to be individually micromanaged throughout the day. I can't see how removing free will would result in functioning drones.

Even if La Pax somehow works the way it's shown, I don't believe that a majority of otherwise nice people would flippantly agree that enslaving humankind is the best solution to generalized violence (especially since it didn't actually solve violence). There's a reason why slavery is currently outlawed in every nation on Earth. So this premise felt half-baked to me; not believable and not thoroughly explored. I can't respect a character who believes that slavery is great, as long as he's not the slave.

There's some tight writing here, and nice dramatic irony. I love how the solution to one of our major global problems (the energy crisis) has unintended consequences that these characters are dealing with. This is an author with promise.

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I expect resolutions in the final book!

Revisado: 03-28-15

This series is best read as one continuous novel, in the tradition of Scandinavian epics. Or like TV shows. So it's hard to review each installment as its own book.

This one was bit more disappointing than the rest, since nothing major was resolved, and new problems arose for Halfdan. But I'm invested in the characters and will read the next book. I fully expect to see some resolutions. If they're not there by the end, I may change my review!

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Straightforward, with flair

Revisado: 03-28-15

It's got the Correia flair, and I enjoyed it. Jake Sullivan is a fun character. But I'm not sure how enjoyable it will be to someone who hasn't read the Grimnoir trilogy (as I have), although there's a lot of set-up in the beginning to establish the world and powers. It ends with a tantalizing hint that there might be to come in the Grimnoir universe.

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Unusual, twisty plot that's really fun to read

Revisado: 03-28-15

Rebecca Shelley always has unusual, original, twisty premises and plots that stand out. I'm not the target audience for Middle Grade, but this was still a pleasure to read.

I usually raise my eyebrow at dragon-rider stories, because there's such a power imbalance (dragons are so much more powerful than humans), I need a reason to believe they have mutual respect for each other. This story gave a good reason. Their friendship rang true. The world-building was great, there was lots of action and adventure, and this was just a fun story.

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Fun space opera

Revisado: 12-06-14

This is more fun than I've had from space opera in a long time. It's right up there with Scott Sigler's "GFL" series. *BUT* this one suffers from amateur writing issues, of the type which won't bother most readers, but will bother anyone who's been writing fiction seriously for more than a few years. The book opens with the main character waking up, pondering his life, and describing himself by looking in the mirror. That's a cliche which every writing workshop warns against. There's some POV shifting from close third to omniscient: We're mostly in Jason's POV, but sometimes the author's voice slips and describes to the reader what Jason doesn't see or know.

That said, this is a story very well told. It moves along at a fast pace, it's fun, and I'm 100% certain this author is a natural-born storyteller. I wasn't blown away by the premise or the world. It's more or less standard heroic fare. But there's a *lot* to be said for good storytelling, solid plotting and pacing, and solidly developed characters. If you liked Hugh Howey's "Molly Fyde" series, or Scott Sigler's "GFL" series, and if you long for more "Star Wars" in fiction, give this a try. Also, the audiobook narrator does a great job.

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