Abandoned at page 250, just because I realized how reluctant I was to pick it up and keep ploughing on with it.
I felt that this was a novel that was skating on the surface of so many elements of its narrative. Barely selling its premise, that due to a far off astronomical event, the Earth's rotation has completely ground to a halt about 30 years before the action of the novel. Whether this would be survivable for the human race is a BIG "if," and Murray didn't do much that made me suspend my disbelief. Little effort is made to populate the narrative with believable, engaging characters: around the rather bland heroine, he's set up a series of sock puppets -- characters who are only there because they're needed by the plot ... until they're not ...
But the worst element has got to be the Plot. Plucky young heroine goes in search of a game-changing secret, making just enough mistakes, detours and false assumptions to stretch things out into novel length. Except, at page 250, it left me behind ...
I felt that this was a novel that was skating on the surface of so many elements of its narrative. Barely selling its premise, that due to a far off astronomical event, the Earth's rotation has completely ground to a halt about 30 years before the action of the novel. Whether this would be survivable for the human race is a BIG "if," and Murray didn't do much that made me suspend my disbelief. Little effort is made to populate the narrative with believable, engaging characters: around the rather bland heroine, he's set up a series of sock puppets -- characters who are only there because they're needed by the plot ... until they're not ...
But the worst element has got to be the Plot. Plucky young heroine goes in search of a game-changing secret, making just enough mistakes, detours and false assumptions to stretch things out into novel length. Except, at page 250, it left me behind ...
