Falling Through Space: A Novella by Michael L. StevensMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Novellas fall into three categories. There are over-padded short stories, underdeveloped novels, and the occasional rare story that is best told at novella length. I think, on the whole, this is an underdeveloped novel.
Perhaps this is why I couldn't figure out, in at least one scene, what was actually going on, and why I felt that the characters didn't behave like real people on occasion. An alien ship turns up randomly in the solar system, set up for habitation by humans (or, at least, human-sized beings who thrive in an Earth-like atmosphere), staffed by sentient robots, capable of bending the laws of physics to teleport itself and other things/people and decide where it "falls" towards, meaning that it operates without fuel. A bunch of scientists come on board, excited to study... the solar system? Not the ship, its origins, its history, its physics, its robots - about the workings of all of which they show remarkably little curiosity?
It reminded me of Gene Wolfe, which is not a compliment coming from me - not because it had finely-worked prose, because it didn't, but for the reasons I just gave: I sometimes couldn't understand what was going on, or why people were acting the way they were.
The dialog was stiff at times, and overly simplistic. In terms of copy editing, the main fault (in the pre-publication version I had from Netgalley, so it may get fixed before publication) was the frequent occurrence of "let's eat Grandma" - missing comma before a term of address. This is despite the author having a degree in English literature, though in my experience people with English degrees often have much worse mechanics than this. The basic rules of prose writing are not something that's usually taught in English classes at universities, sadly.
What I really disliked, though, is a spoiler. (view spoiler) There was no signal that it was that kind of book, and if I'd known that it was, I wouldn't have picked it up.
Not a success for me.
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