Murphys Gambit [Paperback]

Space-born workers being treated like slave. The Collective Enforcement Agency, the space cops, are nothing more than security for the Corporations who run everything. The Corporations are run by families who are always looking to gain more wealth and power.
This sounds like the setting for... millions of science fiction novels. Replace the science with magic and it is also the setting for tons of fantasy novels. For a first book the author does a good job, giving it her own touch, her own terms, ideas and tiny twists that make it her own. BUT it still feels like I've read this book before.
Same with the characters. Greedy business leaders, freedom loving zero-gravity humans who believe in free love and free space, corrupt cops, a misguided hacker, a hot-shot young pilots with a bad temper. It's easy to see how the characters will act or react when faced with a problem. When the plot is totally character-driven, this makes it easy to see where things are going, even with the most surprising plot-twists. The ending is nice, but not surprising.
This book is good for young adults OR if you sent it back into time, maybe the early 1980s?

This book was something of a disappointment. The author had a great idea -- an entirely disenfranchised culture of people who live in space -- but the author did little with it. Granted, this was the author's first foray into writing a full-length science fiction novel, so someone's first try at something shouldn't be shot down completely. Nonetheless, the author could have done so much MORE with this concept. To start, she could have, and indeed should have, fleshed out this novel much more...being a bit more descriptive about the characters' environs as well as the characters' themselves would have gone a long way. Also, the author's consistency could use some work...in the first third of the book the main character gets her ankle hurt and while we do occassionally hear about the pain she's in...there are several times farther along in the story where she could have gotten at least some kind of cursory medical attention...but doesn't...like the author forgot about that thread of the story. But oddly enough it was a couple of small details about this book that bothered me the most. First, the main characater's home system encircles the star Formalhaut...there is NO star Formalhaut...the star's name is FOMALHAUT -- no "R". And the second little thing that bugged me was a reference toward the end of the book about "intergalactic" trade or travel (I don't remember which). The word "intergalactic" means between galaxies, there is no travel between galaxies in the book, just travel within this one...what the author should have said was "interstellar"...which means between stars, which does happen in the book. I know the above points are minor...I can forgive a weakly written story...but when someone screws up little details it really irks me. Overall, despite the fact that this is the author's first attempt at a scifi novel, this book could have been so much better (and if the author ever decides to rewrite things from a different angle later on in her career I would certainly read that story). This book is really best read in the early teen years and should be relegated to the Young Adult section of either your library or bookstore. For ages 9-14 this book is definitely recommended (but not before a book like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game)...for anyone beyond their early to mid-teens, this book is only worth recommending if you've got nothing else to read, want to get a taste of what your kids are reading, or are a really die-hard scifi fan.

The plot in this book is extremely weak, contrived and unbelievable. The writing is poor, and the lack of editing shows contempt for readers. The reviewer who characterized this as written for the 9 - 12 year old crowd hit it on the mark, except I would not want my children to believe this poor writing is an example of good science fiction.

The characterization of the heroine is average, but most other characters are stereotypes and less than one-dimensional. The blond leonine haired accomplice of the heroine waffles between incredible naivety and ignorance, which is utterly inconsistent with the history that the book gives him. The commandant of the heroine's academy is a black hearted bigot, yet one who did little or nothing effective to block her previous six years in the academy. He again shows up, entirely gratuitously, in a subsequent space battle.

Most elements of the plot are contrived and silly on many levels. For example, the "floater" society after a hundred years in space suddenly realizes, on the basis of essentially an email, that it could incorporate and obtain a part of control of galactic government - and with little further ado the government grants this, even though the entire theme of the book is that the floaters are hated and discriminated against. The notion of an advance race of colonists who discover time travel is pure drivel.

Plot devices appear and disappear with no continuity. One of the heroine's accomplices notes in passing that he was a leader in developing genocidal bioweapons. Apparently hundreds of thousands of people have died from this, but the concept is thrown into the plot and then disappears. Same for the advnced human race with extraordinary science who appear and disappear in the space of a few paragraphs. Incredible coincidences are thrown around like popcorn - almost all air and no substance.

In the end, this is an extremely weak book. I threw it away rather than give it to charity. I was most inspired to write this review, the first I ever have attempted despite reading hundreds of other Amazon books, upon reading that the cover blurb was written without attribution by the author's spouse. This is a scandal.