As expected

I wrote recently about reading The Atlas Six and then having the follow-up book, The Atlas Paradox, available from the library right all ready to start when I was ready. I did like a lot about the first book but I didn’t love it. Mostly I enjoyed the character-driven aspects. It seemed to fall down when it got to some of the science which mostly fell into the area of physic. I never studied physics but even I could tell that some of the plot was a bit of a stretch. Not even the magic part of the book could compensate for this problem. Still, I was able to overlook it to some degree because I enjoyed other parts of the book. I was concerned at the end when new characters and plot devices were revealed. It felt like something that could get really messy unless handled well. I kind of underestimated how badly it ended up being.

Ultimately there wasn’t really a proper plot in the second book. Lots of potential ones and lots of ideas being thrown around. But not a plot. There was limited action in the second book, mostly just conversations that came nowhere near driving a story. It felt like the writer just kept adding more and more to the story, trying to cover too much territory and doing none of it well. The science got even worse and something happens to make a cliffhanger that seems terribly unlikely. Not to mention the character involved acts in ways that seem unlikely for this character. There’s just not enough to convince me the character has changed in ways that would create this “development”. Other characters also had changes that seemed to come out of nowhere. It’s as though the drive of the characters ran out of steam and they just kind of fizzled out.

I finished the book but it was something of a struggle to get there. There is another book but I can’t see how this story could even be saved at this point. Still, I do have some curiosity about where it’s all going. Not that I will be losing sleep until the next book is released. LOL