Lightwave: Clocker: Folding Space Series Book 1.0 by AM ScottMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book has several all-too-common problems, and so despite the fact that it was otherwise generally competent, I'm unlikely to read a sequel.
First, the problem of people who don't know much science trying to write science fiction. The justification for why someone is travelling around "tuning" atomic clocks is one of the most egregious bits of nonsensical technobabble (combined with mysticism) that I've seen. Also, the author speaks as if constellations are real astronomical groupings of stars physically close to one another, rather than imaginary groupings of stars that happen to be in the same part of Earth's sky (but are often physically far apart).
Then, some of the very common editing issues. It seems that a lot of authors these days don't understand how the past perfect tense works, and there are several dozen examples in this book where it should have been used instead of simple past, but wasn't. There are also occasional excess commas between non-coordinating adjectives (a very common error; the comma usage is otherwise good, and the apostrophes are all correct.) And there are some glaring dangling modifiers, and a few straight-out typos. It's far from the worst I've seen, certainly, but there are so many of them (especially the missing past perfect) that I was constantly brought up short and distracted from the story.
The story itself is OK; the beginning of an extremely slow-burn romance which, in this book, mostly consists of both attracted parties repeatedly noting to themselves the obstacles to acting on the attraction; and a half-hearted mystery plot with many suspects and no detective to speak of, which resolves itself abruptly. There are a couple of decent action sequences towards the end, and we're shown good-hearted characters who in at least some cases have a degree of depth and backstory. It's very far from terrible, but it's not outstanding either.
Just OK.
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