Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bova does it again., 9 Oct 2001
Ben Bovas writing leaves me breathless. I'm not one of these amateur reviewers who enjoys ruining the plot while giving my opinion on a book, so I'll be breif...but exuse my excited ramblings, i've just finished reading it!! In no way is Venus a Teenage read as someone said here, sure it's not brain bustingly hard sci fi, but that doesn't mean it cannot be enjoyed by the stuffiest of sci fi critics. Bova has a style all his own of clear smooth energetic writing in his stories, but still keeping them human, not getting lost in boring facts only someone with a degree in astrophysics would be able to grab hold of. That's what makes him easily one of the best writers in his genre in my opinion. Venus is action packed, with many unexpected twists with the characters, and probably the most real "hero" I've ever read about. Fast moving action packed. Intelligent Sci Fi but still enjoyable and easy to read for those of us not actual scientists. Quite simply, Sci Fi as it should be done. Amazing.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Really Quite Impressed, 19 Aug 2003
I'm sure there's space out there (puns not intended) for a Kim Stanley Robinson-esque epic/series about the colonisation of Venus, but for now I must say that Bova has slotted together a quite impressive story-driven narrative with this book. It's a *tale*, as opposed to a piece of techno- or sociologically-centred literature, as KSR might write.Quite unlike his two "Mars" books, the tale is one of unremitting corruption, greed, violence, and death, these facets almost unsettling in their explicit profuseness. The hero is a weakling, whose main character advancement is to prove himself otherwise to a ship-full of brash, macho survivors he finds himself marooned with, when he is rescued from the death of his own ship high in Venus' cloud-tops. The gore and sex-soaked contents are almost-but-not-quite sickening, and anyway manage to portray enough of a moral message to excuse them. The central conceit swinging around hatred, rejection and family loyalties is exceedingly well done. And there's a twist towards the close which, although well-executed, is distinctly lifted from a well-known film I could name... The make-up of the book seems to encapsulate the planet: hellishly gripping, morally corrosive, thick and murky and unremittingly hostile, turning up the heat the deeper down you go. Soaked in familial loathing, death and greed. Which of course gives it a certain appeal. And the ending is thoroughly bittersweet. Bravo! A nearly unrecognised masterpiece, in my opinion, like so much other hard SF. Four point five stars.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Competent, interesting, but somehow lacking, 7 Oct 2001
By A Customer
I'm currently working my way through BB's "Grand Tour" novels (Mars, Jupiter, Venus, etc), and I'm finding my response to all of them to be similar. They're enjoyable, fast-moving stories grounded in what seems to me to be mostly credible science, but are let down by rather clunky characterisation and rather obvious plotting.It may be a deliberate ploy to make all of his lead characters so unsympathetic, but it's also rather irritating, particularly as their flaws are explained away by rather basic psychology (father hated him / Red Indian feels he's an outcast / torn between religion and science). And I guessed who the unbalanced one was in RtM, and what the true story of Fuchs was in Venus, and these little gripes detract from what would otherwise be first class stories. So: buy, enjoy for the pace and the science, but be prepared to skim past the character profiles...
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