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There Goes The Galaxy (2011)

by Jenn Thorson(Favorite Author)
3.76 of 5 Votes: 3
ISBN
0983804508 (ISBN13: 9780983804505)
languge
English
genre
publisher
Waterhouse Press
review 1: Sci-fi is not my favorite genre. But I like good writing, good humor and an engaging plot and this book delivers on all counts.Bertram Ludlow has been kidnapped by alien Rolliam Tsmorlood, because he is the only one who can save Earth and “life as we know it”. There’s only one problem; he has no idea what he’s doing and neither does Rollie.The resulting story is a hilarious romp through the GCU (Greater Communicating Universe) as we discover its complexities and incongruities along with Bertram.The story is well paced and speckled with humor. For the first half of the story, Bertram thinks that he has finally lost it and he keeps analyzing what he thinks is his delusion which leads to very funny inner dialogue. The characters could have used a little bit more dev... moreelopment but it does not really take anything away from the story. It could be a personal preference on my part. It certainly didn’t stop me from falling in deep like with Rollie, the badass alien outlaw who becomes Bertram’s sidekick (or vice versa, depending on the situation they find themselves in) against his will.A solid 4 stars. I will definitely be reading the rest of this series.
review 2: There is a point where every piece of comic or absurdist science fiction is compared to Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. For this book this point happened before I finished the first chapter and that comparison was not favourable. What makes the situation worse is the feeling that the author's intention was to write a similar book, the basic premise would like to follow the one of its great ancestor but unfortunately everything just highlights the flaws in There goes the Galaxy. It is not a bad book, but it is a disappointing book, with potential that flares up, only to be snuffed immediately. The characters never evolve beyond being names and even those names do not stick and are almost impossible to remember. As a result there were several points where I simply had no idea what was happening, who was acting and how this scene fit into the overall structure. Our protagonist was carefully selected to be the perfect average human being who will not be missed… and is a graduate student in cognitive psychology. Which is literally the only information we get about this character for the whole book. He is tossed into the great wide universe and confronted with dangers and wonders and never moves beyond his "cosmic newbie" persona. There are times when he almost develops his own persona only to snap back once he falls back with the other characters. Those get slightly more characterization since they are aliens, but that more is rare and for most of them is more like corporate stereotyping. The plot structure makes this problem worse. The protagonist chases the story and is always behind the reader, whenever he figures out one part of the greater mystery the author immediately tells the next part which leaves the story only to play catch up. There is no second or third level, there is only the one and it is resolved. There are events that telegraph widely that they serve no purpose, a short detour from the central plotline and those reinforce the whole Hitchhikers Guide feeling. But these actually get recalled later in the book which gives it a nice feeling of cohesion until this is taken too far and torpedoes the central plotline. in fact most of the problems can be summarized by saying "too far". The story is told by a florid, overloaded language which clearly tries to be vivid but fails spectacularly. The metaphors are trite and in several cases too many. As a result the timing is off, which leads to the few good jokes falling flat after an exhausting buildup. The whole book works this way. The first three quarters are exhausting buildup for a better fourth quarter, that unfortunately falls flat because of its own flaws and problems. The sad thing is, the book is not bad, but the few good jokes and ideas only highlight the wasted potential. The author clearly has a great style, but it only appears sporadically and hides immediately. The book I read and the book that is featured in the description are two different books and I desperately wanted to read the description, not the book I had in front of me. less
Reviews (see all)
trollolol
Stellar! It kept me turning page after page just to see what was going to happen.
amberra
Tries so hard to be funny, and ends up not being so.
Breanna
Maybe a 3.5 read. It was just so looooooonnnng.
joannaliya
I just couldn't make myself care.
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