The Long Way Home [Paperback]

Great alien environents. Characters you care about. Fast paced. I cant wait for the sequal. Those nasty monkey claws need a good butt kicking. If Bain had skipped the sleasy romance details I would give it 5 stars. However Porn and Sci Fi Combos are usually much worse. Please stick to pure Sci Fi next time Darrell.

I enjoyed this book and although I don't want to give it away, I really liked reading about the character's lives. I for one didn't mind the sex parts of the books. It really wasn't all that graphic. Yet it did help me feel for the people more. I was amazed at the worlds and the dangers that they encountered. Always something so strange. How they went to faster than light or warp speed or whatever was a novel idea. Oh and the monkeyclaws were seriously bent creatures! I liked the ending and it left me with a good feeling. I kept saying to myself, "Wow! That was a good book". Of course I'm just an average joe here and not a professional critic. I've seen some people here citicize us average reader's comments. It's the one or two naysayers who are the odd man out. Most of us are having a good time reading good books from this great Author. There are some formatting errors in here but not bad enough that I can't just ignore it. It's the story that counts! And the kindle price is right. You know, I could seriously see this one as a movie. It would sure be something new and fresh. I'm quickly becoming a Sci-fi fan, and Darrell Bain is to blame!

First, confession time: I didn't make it through this book. 20% of the way in, I decided that I'd given it a chance, and could in all fairness put it down.

The idea is appealing - who doesn't love a castaway story, a quest to return home with only your wits and the contents of a lifeboat to get you there? Unfortunately, the writing just couldn't support the story the author wanted to tell. There were two big issues I had with the writing. The first was composed of a lot of little issues of terminology and jargon. After a while, the difference between a Spacer 3 and an Explorer 2, or a warrant officer and a lieutenant, start to get confusing - and I have read a lot of military scifi, I know what the "standard" ranking system is supposed to look like. I got the feeling that somewhere there was a nifty chart laid out with a detailed ranking system, which the author thought was cool and somehow wanted to shoehorn into the book.

The most irritating thing to me was the constant sexual background to everything. Yes, I recognize that add ANY two human beings together anywhere, and there's going to be SOME kind of sexual factor involved, however faint or unimportant - humans are sexual beasts, and Bain's characters are all youngish healthy specimens trapped in a small craft for a long journey. But it just got really old really fast having to slog through yet another random male's internal monologue describing the sexual qualifications of a random female. Apparently every male on the boat was evaluating every female primarily on her breeding potential. Again, yes, I'm a guy, I KNOW that this isn't totally unrealistic - but the characters just weren't developed enough for me to CARE that John thought Marsha had nice eyes and cute ears. Or that Luke thought Holly had firm calves. Etc. Etc. Ad nauseum. In the first week after the loss of their mother ship, the castaways spend hours wringing their hands over the potential morale effects of, in order of importance: a) the apparently inevitable breakdown of non-fraternization regulations and b) only having room for a small gym, until the expected attrition along the way cleared out more living space for the presumably grateful survivors.

Which points out the real weakness of this book. There are too many characters introduced too quickly, without enough characterization to go around. What characterization is there doesn't always ring true - the military decisions leading up the the loss of the mother ship seem exceptionally far-fetched, and the attitude towards potential loss of life on the trip home seems faintly unreal. I have the book beside me, but I won't bother opening it to try and figure out who the main characters (if any) were - I can't remember, and I was reading the book 8 minutes ago. I think the commanding officer's name started with a "J." I think some of the other characters also had names starting with a "J." That's about as much as I recall.

I believe some readers will find the story itself entertaining, if they're not too concerned with character development. It's very much a book written by a guy for guys, and some guys will find it a fun, easy romp without anything too challenging to distract from the yarn. The book feels like a first effort by an author who, in 20 years with a dozen better books under his belt, will look back on it fondly, but a little embarrassed that this was published.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  3.7 out of 5 stars