J S Morin

I wanted to like this book because the blurb read like a Firefly-style adventure.
I was very disappointed.

It is ultra-light, not tightly written, with predictable, mundane dialogue throughout. It takes a while to get to the point of the story, then (80% through the book) it does get to an attention-worthy bit of business. Can't say I'm a fan of having magic in a hard SF universe just to have it used as an ass-saving device. World building is poor. There were many places where it would have been great to have an explanation/discussion of what/why re the 'verse they were in; there were many, many places where too much time was spent explaining unnecessary decor details.

With a good editor, this could make a passable novella, or TV script.… (meer)

The Good: Gripping novel, fascinating world, some likeable characters.

The best trope was that robots were copies of living humans, but quirky, like people with autism, or from an exotic tribe with weird customs, despite them being copies of our own contemporary culture.

I'm strongly tempted to read the next book.

The Gripes: It needed about 100 pages cut. It has many chase scenes where the villain has the hero in their clutches & the hero escapes inexplicably or implausibly.

Some information travelled too fast (i.e. the true motives of the villain were known to everyone mid story long before the villain could tell everyone), some information spread too slow, (the hero didn't call this world's police or for any backup & was generally secretive for no clear reason other than to keep other characters from cluttering the story).

And finally, Plato was a deus-ex-machina character with too much power to fix problems for an escaped lab animal.… (meer)