nellbathory

[nellbathory]

30th Century Escape (General Audience Edition) by Mark Kingston Levin PhD

Review originally posted at https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=102903

In the story of 30th Century: Escape (General Audience Edition), we follow the main character of the name Jennifer Heros. She was born and raised in the thirtieth century and dedicated her life to fight in a secret organization against creatures called Syndos - who are more artificial intelligence than human. However, at the beginning of the story, she decides to leave this century for a much less dangerous times in the twenty-first century, after sending her team off to the twenty-seventh century for a mission to save the Naturals (real humans) before the Syndos decide to start their genocide against them. The author, Mark Kingston Levin PhD, has obviously prepared for us a striking new reality with so many fascinating aspects of the future that were described in the beginning of the book. I was absolutely taken aback by the complexity of the world-building and time-traveling he had done and was very much looking forward to read about what we might expect to see in the far future. And even though, I knew the actual story was about getting away from that world into our present time, I was a little disappointed to find the main character cutting all the connection to that time and basically giving us no more information about it than what we could read in the first chapter of the book. I have to say that after reading the book, I was way more interested in those couple of pages where we heard about the future that any other part of the story. My biggest complaint, and the reason I’m giving this book only 1 star out of 4, is the way it is written. I know, we all have that one book that is poorly written but the story is good so we still give it at least a two out of four, but this is not that case. While the story was properly formatted and very-well edited (I only found a single typo), that’s where all the positive ends. The storyline was all over the place and I honestly could not tell you the flow of the time - it is summer, but wait now it is thanksgiving, now christmas and now summer again? I was confused more than I wish to admit. To be honest, I could not even tell you what exactly was the book about, besides the summary since it took so many different directions I lost count. Is it about fitting in to this new society? Or maybe scientific research? Yeah, that would be expected and nice if it wasn’t for the most parts that the main character just spends running around the islands, sounding like nothing more that a tour guide (honestly, I read more about the polynesian nature and culture, than I know about the character itself), and all those sex and orgy scenes that I just couldn’t get over without cringing and gagging my way through. I started reading for science but ended up having to follow a Documentary Channel show on PornHub with one of the most far-fetched stories I’ve ever read about (and trust me, I’ve read some really bad ones before). The story and the artificial characters is really what got me livid. I believe that the characters are what makes the story the best or the worst and, unfortunately, it is the latter this time. Every single conversation or inner monologue just sounded so flat and dry, I could not imagine any part of it actually happening in the real life. The reactions of the characters were, like I said before, far-fetched and made me feel like I was reading a script for a very bad reality show (you know, the ones they want you to believe is real but all the drama is scripted anyways). All the main plot points were just plain ridiculous and while I might tolerate it in a book for kids or pre-teens (the princess saved by a god-damned dolphin for example), it has no place in a sci-fi book in my opinion. I mean, every single bad thing that happened in the story felt like the author said to himself - Oh! Everything has been going well for the past hundred pages, hm, I better do something mildly dangerous to make it believable! But wait, I should turn the danger into the greatest discovery and let them get rich from finding some bones! - just.. so dumb and so fabricated. Every. Thing. So, to sum it up, do not bother with this book. It sounds great at the beginning, but does not live up to its expectations and leaves you absolutely baffled at how can someone look at it and say “YES! LET’S PUBLISH THAT!”. I would not recommend anyone to read this but if so, maybe someone young enough to be able to forgive the lack of any character development or personality, but still intelligent enough to understand the scientific background to the story - yeah, I don’t think you’d find someone like that, either. I have to admit that it took great will-power to finish and honestly if I didn’t have a 40 minute train ride every morning and evening and I brought something else to busy myself with, I would not have made myself finish even half of it.

[nellbathory]

Haku 🌸 || Markers and white charcoal

Hey, I’m Nellbathory. I have recently started being more serious about my art and thought posting it and getting people’s opinions would be a good way to start. Feel free to leave a comment, dm me or ask any questions.

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