Ambrose
6/6/2023
Shock Wave:
This is the most surprisingly underrated book I have ever read, without a doubt. It has like 10 ratings on goodreads??? My largest complaint about this book is how short it was. If this book was a 600 page plus monster I would have been a happy man. It had the scope for it too. Now that I'm done reading it I'm just left craving more like a cat first introduced to cat-nip.
I don't typically read a ton of sci-fi and I wanted older classic sci-fi that really fit all the criteria for what the core of sci-fi is. I got that and much more from this book,I found it on the list of books called "Ace Doubles" which are two novellas published together in one novel.
First of all I was intensely pleased to find out that the authors of this book was a married couple. I mean I think it's so romantic that a couple wrote this book together. I was intrigued right as the book started as I immediately liked the writing style. After this I got a little board of the technical descriptions and was worried I wouldn't like the book very much. Once it picked up though I was hooked for the rest of the book.
The characters relationships development was amazing, I loved the MC and although the technical stuff was a little bit much sometimes it was fascinating as well. I loved how on top of everything some interesting philosophical discussions were sprinkled in about what freedom is and how important it is.
The ending was a bit rushed... but maybe that's because I wasn't ready to be done and I wanted more and more. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time. I think I'll re-read it multiple times over the years to come. READ THIS BOOK!
Envoy to the Dog Star:
This was the second half of the Ace Double book G-614 and was defiantly more what I was expecting when I decided to read a Ace Double. Shock Wave really blew me out of the water and I wasn't expecting something so good twice in a row. This wasn't by any means a bad story though, I still enjoyed reading it. It just embodied the work of an author who only wrote one novel. There's a refinement in established authors that sets their works above this one. This almost felt like a fun project rather then a novel.
The plotline is interesting it's about a dog that's brain has been taken out of it's body and sent into space to find a planet that's habitable for humans to curb the problem of overpopulation and effects of nuclear war. Due to scientific studies conducted on dogs they have evolved to a point that they are independent entities with a conscious and the ability to speak. The dog is sent into space because no human is willing to risk their life, which is quite silly and illogical. On top of this probably my biggest problem during the entire book is that the dog protagonist thinks and acts very much like a human. If your going to make a dog MC, it has to act differently then a human MC otherwise it just doesn't work.
The dog ends up landing on a planet very similar to earth and tries to connect to the humans and convincing them of his plan. And just COINCIDENTALLY not only does this random planet have humans. THEY ALSO HAVE INTELLAGENT DOGS. It's a very fanciful story to say the least. Which definitely was annoying when it was very apparent. However, it was a fun read, it wrapped up nicely and I liked the pace. If some things were refined it could be a really good concept.