May 09, Chris devine rated it it was amazing. I really liked this book, it's well written and and it's a pretty original story. Parts of it were a little confusing, but you can still grasp what's going on. The ending kind of sucked, with no real closure for the 3 characters. I can't remember if I even finished it or gave up halfway through, I just remember feeling foolish for having made myself endure this Some interesting ideas marred by old writing techniques and a plodding pacing.
Harmony by Keith Brooke
Not recommended except, maybe for those who want a new world created for them at the expense of plot and characterisation. Human on a whim, needing a new book for a long journey and fancying a bit of modern Science Fiction. Despite this, I have fairly strong expectations of the genre. Not a simple task, I'll grant you, and possibly not what every one looks for in SF.
Human certainly satisfies some of this desire. It is full of ideas and its central postulate is interesting. It has some quasi-philosophical ideas that are well worth a novel exploring and are interesting enough to be enjoyed simply as a picture of another universe. So why, if it covers what I expect from an SF novel, do I feel exceptionally unsatisfied by this book? Unfortunately, the interesting ideas and central theme are plagued by poor execution.
I constantly felt like I was being told how characters were feeling, rather than seeing it. The first person narrator had a nasty habit of just telling me not only how he was feeling, but how he expected others were feeling. There were rarely any times when the reader was left to discover the characters themselves and surmise why they were reacting to situations in certain ways.
This kept a constant distance between me and the characters and heavily reduced any emotional attachment I had for them. There were also a large amount of repetitions. I felt like we were told the most simple of things about this new universe over and over again, while other aspects were left vague and hazy.
This gave the the novel a young adult feeling, or possibly even younger, which then caused some of the stronger language to jar and once again drag the reader away from the story. I found myself getting increasingly frustrated half way through the book, as I became bored of the characters and yet kept getting told the same thing over and over again.
So this brings me on to the pacing. The start of the story was fairly brisk but once I got to the middle third, the narrative started to drag and feel more like filler than story progression. Even the dramatic action through these aspects were relegated to three or so lines of exposition that sapped any excitement from the prose. It felt like the author was desperate to skim this part of the story and get towards his 'big' finale. Throughout the story there was also an excessive use of flashbacks, giving back story to the characters that, I felt, would have been far more interesting for the reader to discover through the central narrative rather than having these pauses in the adventure to fill us in on the details.
I don't have a problem with some flashbacks, sometimes they are necessary, but there were far too many for my liking and this further affected the pacing and made the middle third of this book a real struggle to finish. Oddly enough too, often it felt like the ideas of the story, the central point of it, were getting in the way of the narrative.
It felt like they were two novels battling each other out on the pages. One was a crazy SF story with lots of weird quasi-philosophical thoughts and a bustling, brightly coloured world, the other was a more basic adventure romp possibly adventure romance. The fighting between these two different narratives disrupted both of them, and while the adventure romp seemed to win out, leaving the quasi-philosophical thoughts to be a mere post script, the reader was or at least I was left feeling frustrated, unsatisfied, and frankly a little bit annoyed.
One last comment too.
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The world was no where near busy enough. The author seemed to want us to feel the bustle of a universe full of aliens, a whole world happening behind the central characters minor exploits. A whole bubbling pot of unknowable creatures and technology that we couldn't hope to understand. Yet, it felt rather 2D and thus rather bland. I remember how, with a few simple lines, Fahrenheit made me feel that a whole, darker and scarier world was happening behind the central plot.
Human, with vastly more words, was unable to create this lingering threat or tension behind the central story. Human Harmony had a bag full of ideas, is execution weakened those ideas, kept me distant from the characters and left me feeling frustrated. I'm sure the ending and some of the ideas may stick with readers, I don't think the story earned them.
Any profundity of the idea was lost because the idea was not entwined into the narrative we were being told. It was in the world, but the world should be the window dressing of a strong narrative, not the main point shielded by an adventure romp.
Aug 06, Tina rated it liked it Recommends it for: People who want entertainment but no substance. This novel had such potential but lacked the detail to back it up — it really flopped. I was very intrigued by the concept — humanity degraded to the bottom of the pecking order by aliens. It would be like what would have happened in Halo had the Covenant won and not glassed Earth. The more I think about it too, the more the novel did remind me of Halo, and this is probably because I was striving to give the ali This novel had such potential but lacked the detail to back it up — it really flopped.
The more I think about it too, the more the novel did remind me of Halo, and this is probably because I was striving to give the aliens some context and history. We learned absolutely nothing about the aliens in this story. And, given the different races of aliens hanging out on earth, I ended up thinking of this book as an alternate-reality Halo fan-fic, just to give some content to the aliens. This is not good. That being said, I enjoyed reading Halo…I meant Harmony. The pacing was nice and there was a lot of action. The characters were likable and acted reasonably, for the most part.
Frankhay had a bit more depth than most, though we really only get to know 3 characters out of the lot; everyone else is just kind of there. There was also something that really annoyed me, and that was the damn stupid cliffhanger chapter endings. I mean, once and awhile is fine, because sometimes it works. Give me substance and depth, not lame cliffhanger chapters.
What I liked the most out of the whole novel was the emotive speech, or click. I thought that was a really cool concept that brought more emotion and description to the story. But it was cheating I approved of, since I thought it was interesting. Overall, if you want a sci-fi novel that has potential but in the end is just an entertaining, mindless read, this is your novel. Jun 29, Andrew rated it liked it. A depressing grim-dark-meathook future, but not in the SF-traditional moralist way.
Lots and lots of aliens. They're nearly all incomprehensible aliens, with incomprehensible technology, and they've remade most of the planet into an unending array of what is, from our point of view, nightmare. It's a depressing book because the human characters are convinced correctly, and convincingly A depressing grim-dark-meathook future, but not in the SF-traditional moralist way. It's a depressing book because the human characters are convinced correctly, and convincingly that this is normal.
They have some leverage our protagonist hacks RFID microbes so that his friends can circumvent a few rules but they don't think of themselves as an "alien resistance movement"; they're just humans who have avoided being killed or mind-controlled, or randomly cyborged, or melted or whatever. They speak an alien-punctuated argot. They don't even think of Earth as their planet.
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They know they are "indigenes", but to most of them it's just a word, generally found in sentences like "You are not cleared to be outside the Indigenous Population Preserve after curfew. Rumors of a far-off place where humans live in safety! The scrabbulous petty gangs of the city attempt to join up and migrate. In the meantime, a mysterious stranger is the destined This is about where the story goes off the rails.
Phrases like "destined" and "mysterious quality of the human soul" start popping up. The ultimate gimmick there is an ultimate gimmick is cute; I mean, I liked the idea and I see why the author wanted to write a book underneath it. I would probably have been impressed, way back when I was a teenager trying to find obscure Ann Maxwell novels. At this point, however, the grim-dark squalor is not shocking and the metaphysical gallimaufrey is not convincing, so I did not buy into the plot. This book started okay and finished okay. I was taken in by the blurb, "What if we were never alone?
It had so much potential, and it took so long to get past what I wanted to read to what I was actually reading.
Alt.human aka Harmony
It had moments of steampunk, which I don't like, but what really bothered me was the narrative. Dodge narrated it mostly in first person, but there were sections that he narrated in third person, recounting Hope's experiences before they met. In my opinion the thir This book started okay and finished okay.
In my opinion the third person narration was the best, until we discovered that it was Dodge. He knew too much about what she was thinking and feeling. It just didn't work the further into the story we went. Your display name should be at least 2 characters long. At Kobo, we try to ensure that published reviews do not contain rude or profane language, spoilers, or any of our reviewer's personal information.
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Dodge Mercer deals in identities, which is fine until the day he deals the wrong identity and clan war breaks out. Hope Burren has no identity, and no past, struggling with a relentless choir of voices filling her head. In a world where nothing is as it seems, where humans are segregated and aliens can sing realities and tear worlds apart, Dodge and Hope lead a ragged band of survivors in a search for the rumoured sanctuary of Harmony, and what may be the only hope for humankind.
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Home About Brookeshop Buy ebooks Contact. By Keith Brooke and infinity plus. About Keith Brooke and infinity plus. Keith Brooke is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and other strange stuff, and editor and reviewer of same.