You guys. I tried so hard with this book. I wanted to just read a silly, fun little sci-fi adventure but I could not get through this. I submit, at my best attempts to finish, this book to the DNR pile.
It starts off strong, with a fun little space ship chase and the premise of a corporate controlled space future. It seemed simple enough and like it would just be, y’know, fun. Like not profound, not stupid, but fun. Except we end up in these caves and we’re running away from the authorities and this divorced couple hates each other and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I couldn’t get into the characters. They were boring. They were immature. They had the emotional maturity of basement dwelling gamer nerds who have never learned self-reflection and agency. Every single one of them was like this. And I don’t care about rock climbing or cave exploring- I picked up the book for a space adventure. Like, there is a damn spaceship on the cover coming out of a wormhole, so I wanted that: SPACE. Not caves.
I feel like Wells is one of those writers who took a course on how to pitch and start a book, because the start of this book is great. It has all those elements you hear people telling you a great opening chapter should have, with adventure, mystery and clear good guys to root for- but then it just doesn’t pay off.
I probably should have realized I wasn’t going to finish this when, at my friend’s cottage, he asked me what it was about and I said, “oh you know, it’s just a silly space adventure”. Except it wasn’t even that because we ended up on a boring dead planet exploring a boring cave with boring, immature people.