Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: Count to the Eschaton Sequence

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Count to Infinity (Count to the Eschaton Sequence #6) ★★☆☆½

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Title: Count to Infinity
Series: Count to the Eschaton Sequence #6
Author: John Wright
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 321
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Montrose survives for another 18+ billion years and he and Rania see the Universe become perfect through outside influence.

The End of the Series. THANK GOODNESS!!!!

My Thoughts:

This book went from a very few really cool sequences to me skimming 10+ pages at a time as the author whacks off to his own words. If philosophy wrapped in a hard sf container is your thing, this might be for you.

Wright is a Roman Catholic and that shows through so strongly here. In many ways, his theistic evolutionist outlook and how he reconciles that to Scripture takes over this book and I actually enjoyed reading his viewpoint (while being in total disagreement). But that wasn't what this series started out as and it really shouldn't have ended that way.

However, like I mentioned previously, the plot is burdened by stretches of description that bored me to death. Really, this could have been a short story and been more appealing for it. I would have dnf'd this at the 10% mark but I wanted to see how Montrose and Rania finally get together and since that didn't happen until over the half way mark, I figured “in for a penny, in for a pound” and finished it.

However, I have NEVER skimmed so much of a book as I did here. I deliberately skipped huge swathes until I saw key words that were action words. Sadly, they were few and far between. While book 1 intrigued me greatly, each successive book got progressively more descriptive, less action'y and more boring. I'm going to have to think long and hard about if I want to try any of his other series.

★★☆☆½

All My "Count to the Eschaton Sequence" Reviews

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

The Vindication of Man (Count to the Eschaton Sequence #5) ★★★☆☆

Title: The Vindication of Man
Series: Count to the Eschaton Sequence #5
Author: John Wright
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 450
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Rania returns! And she is carrying new Monument coding from M3 that will bring peace to all of humanity in all its forms. Problem is, she's a false Rania and the coding will turn humanity into docile sheep who demand a ruling hand.

Montrose runs away and ends up fighting Blackie, again. They are forced to make peace as they want to go to M3 and find out what happened to the real Rania.

Blackie pulls a fast one and forces a duel, the apparent Final Duel, between them. Which they both want. However, Blackie has rigged the game and leaves Montrose in a dead ship with no energy while he continues on to M3 and Rania. The book ends with Montrose's intelligence shutting down to keep its coherence.

My Thoughts:

Unfortunately, this book was just plain boring. Wright delves deeply into philosophical and science fictional asides and the plot has barely advanced from the previous book.

By the halfway mark I could tell when it was safe to skip a page or two of SF-babble. When he does decide to actually plot, it is good. Montrose and Blackie are awesome characters, when they're actually DOING something. But my goodness there is so much talking about energy and various types of future technology that it became pointless. Nano-technology leads to pico-technology which leads to phenitol-technology which leads to fermo-technology which leads to poop-technology which leads to..., and on you go.

Thankfully, there is only 1 more book in this series and while I'm ok with reading it, I'm not “excited” to read it.

I follow Mr Wright on his blog, one of the extremely few authors I feel comfortable doing so. Once I'm done with this series he has a couple of others that I do plan on checking out.

★★★☆☆