She Treads Softly: Saturn Run

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Saturn Run

Saturn Run by John Sandford, Ctein

Penguin: 10/6/15
eBook review copy, 496 pages
ISBN-13: 9780698411678
http://www.johnsandford.org/SaturnRun.html

Saturn Run by John Sandford, and Ctein is a recommended political thriller in a sci-fi setting.

It is 2066 and a spaceship is detected by Saturn. Obviously, there are many government meetings and President Amanda Santeros wants to send a mission there to investigate, and, hopefully, capture the technology. In a plan to keep the Chinese from knowing, only a few members of the mission are really told where they are going and why - in the ship named the Richard M. Nixon. The Chinese discover the real reason for the US launch and they plan their own, competing mission to Saturn.

Despite an exciting premise and the fact that I enjoy science fiction, I really found it a challenge to get into this novel. There is plenty of technical science for those of us who like some science with our science fiction, but in this case it felt more like information dumps rather than science included in the fictional story. That combined with the abundance of international intrigue and espionage and characters I didn't really care for. I'm not disappointed that I read it, but it did seem to be bogged down in details with little plot advancement. The three stars are because it is well written, but it suffered in comparison to the next sci-fi book I read which had a much more satisfying plot and better characters.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Penguin for review purposes.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.