Category Archives: Alien World

Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

This YA book has a great premise: on a distant planet, in a town with only men, everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts. Todd, the youngest person in town and a month away from manhood, slowly learns that everyone is keeping a horrible secret from him. He is forced to flee with his only friend, a talking dog. They discover the most surprising thing Todd’s ever seen: a living girl.

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Review: Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward

Dragon’s Egg is a fun, clever look at life evolving on the surface of a neutron star, where one hour of human time is the equivalent of hundreds of years on the alien star.

While the extreme physics of the story may be accurate, Dragon’s Egg contains some of the most stilted dialogue I’ve come across in a long time, especially in the beginning. I found myself thinking that author Robert L. Forward must have talked to a human woman at some point in his life, but if so, that knowledge did not find its way to his book.

However, this is not a story you read for its character development. Dragon’s Egg is all about examining an alien race evolving on a sphere with a gravity of 67 billion Gs, and living at a million times the speed of humans. The story is most believable when it’s dealing with aliens, and it’s still a fun ride.

Recommendation: Get it at the library. Power through the first chapter and you’ll be fine.

Review: Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem

My kid is learning to play the piano, and part of that is using dynamics: playing some parts of the song quiet, and some parts loud. Dynamics add contrast and make a song more interesting. Unfortunately, Jonathan Lethem’s book Girl in Landscape, while being extremely well-written, lacks dynamics. It’s heavy, and stays heavy throughout.

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