Crater (A Helium-3 Novel)

:My random thoughts: 

I simply love Science Fiction novels, and this one truly grabbed my attention.  I'm very inters ted in Moon colonizing (even if I'm highly skeptical about the logistics of it), and this one seemed full of adventure, daring, and science fiction awesomeness.


It was an utter fail.
I shall leave you to my review...

:Publisher's Description:

A Helium-3 miner named Crater makes a treacherous journey through space to find a mysterious and priceless treasure.
It's the 22nd Century and a tough, pioneering people are mining the moon
to produce energy for a desperate, war torn Earth.  Crater Trueblood, an
orphan, loves his life in Moontown, a frontier mining settlement.  Just turned sixteen, Crater is already a seasoned Helium 3 miner, hoping someday to be a foreman on the scrapes.  But "the Colonel," the man who owns the mine, has a different plan for Crater which includes Maria, the Colonel's daring young granddaughter.  Crater, accompanied by Maria and his gillie--a sentient and sometimes insubordinate clump of slime mold cells--must shepherd a convoy of Helium 3 trucks across a forbidding river of dust while also looking for a mysterious, historical artifact that could mean the difference between life and death for every inhabitant on the moon.

  :info to know:

Author: Homer Hickman

My recommended age: 11+

Their recommended age: NA

Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishers

Number of Pages: 320

• Characters:  I shall now heave a huge sigh.  All the characters had the possibility to be greatness. They had everything, the depth, the kwirks, the personalities...but know what they lacked? An author able to blow life into them.  The only character that had any real life, was Gillie. Oh, I loved sassy, smart mouth, mischievous Gillie from the first. He was the best part in the book. And, then, Mr. Hickman had to kill him.  I have therefore no desire to read the next books, unless there is some slim chance Gillie did not die, but was laying, rebooting himself somewhere in the great moon expanse.

 Plot:
It was sketchy, sometimes I couldn't follow what was happening, and I had to back track many times just to understand. There were far to many boring, 'Just the narrator talking' scenes. And the ending nearly killed me.

Writing Style:
The whole time, all I could think was, "Amateur".  The action scenes were to fast paced and roughly written to make much sense with them, the Characters that should've been deep were shallow, and I could make no sense of Maria, her person was always changing it's angle. Crater's friend, or his boss? Fun loving girl, or strict heiress?

Cover:
A splendid cover for a not so splendid novel.

Ending:
Horrid.  1) The Gillie dies. 2) Just a bag of bones? 3) I could care less about Maria, 4) The Action was choppy, and I didn't realize Gillie was dead until nearly half a chapter later and Crater said it bluntly.

World Building:
If he did nothing else, he gave a very interesting view of our Moon. It was an interesting view, especially with all the mutants. We all love mutant.

Language:

None, however, several Moon Truckers do, quote, "Disrespectful finger signs". I shall let you figure out what that means.

Drugs and Drink:

None.

Romance and sexual content:

Crater has a crush on Maria, and I think it is vis versa, but Maria is so confusing, I don't truly know.  They kiss technically once, and once they put their helmets together, and kiss through it, but their lips don't touch.

Violence:

Plenty. Between warrior mutants, Gillie's tricks, dare devil truckers, and a moon more wilder then the Wild West, there is plenty of clean violence. Nothing gut wrenching.

Ratings

This book really, truly, had the possibility to be a wonderful read.  The plot idea, the characters, everything could have been fantastic had it been written better.

But I can't review a novel on the Would'a, Could'a, Should'a.

 

 

Ever been truly disappointed by a Novel?