 |
|
Title: The Death of Sleep (Planet Pirates, Vol. 2)
ISBN: 0356203085
Author:
Anne McCaffrey
Jody Lynn Nye
Publicate Date: 1991-11-14
Publish: 1991-11-14
List Price: Not Available
Average Customer Rating: 2.5
Format: Hardcover
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.49
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: It goes off on a tangent, then stops!
This book is split into different parts, and others have already written summaries, so I won't bother going into details. There are some interesting and mysterious aliens that get introduced, obviously hold some significance, but are ignored (Theks). There are story-lines that are created, and abandoned at whim as the main character is dropped into cold-sleep again and again, which is ok, as it means there's more challenges to face when she wakes up. That said, book really takes a random different direction in the last part, the writing becomes rushed, and the story just ends with nothing resolved.
Different people have said that Dinosaur planet, or Sassinak (main character's great great granddaughter or something) come next, but neither seems to mention the main character at all, although evidently she comes back in Generation Warriors... but, I most likely won't bother reading them, and there's something really frustrating about being in Iraq, wanting a good sci-fi diversion, then getting caught up in this story. Even though it starts falling apart from the beginning you hope it all comes together- it just wanders around and falls apart some more before just deciding to give up and end! ARGH!!!!
It could have been sooooo good, but it wasn't, and that's another frustrating thing about it!
|
2: Worthy prequel
Lunzie Mespil leaves her 14-year-old daughter, Fiona, with friends on the colony planet where she planned to settle before the authorities there eliminated the job for which she had just relocated. Single mother Lunzie's skills as a physician specializing in space-caused mental traumas are very much needed on a distant mining platform. Once she's earned a decent nest egg (or maybe more) there, she will return to the child she's never left before. A couple of years, Lunzie believes. But space has other ideas, and Lunzie winds up taking refuge in cold sleep after the ship in which she's traveling is destroyed. She wakes more than 60 years later. Where is Fiona? And what's more important, how is Fiona? What kind of life has she had, without her mother to guide her through adolescence into womanhood?
In this first book of McCaffrey's "Planet Pirates" series, written as a prequel to the others, the authors speculate about the impact on human lives of being interrupted by the familiar SF device of cold sleep. What will it be like, to wake in a universe that's gone on without you for years - decades - maybe even centuries? To find that your loved ones have moved on through their lives, your profession has changed so much that you have to relearn it (or choose to master a different one instead), and that even holding a conversation with people who've been awake all along can be problematic?
The book's episodic plot works fine, and the lead-in to DINOSAUR PLANET (next in the series) is handled smoothly. But it's the questions Lunzie has to answer that fascinated this reader, who otherwise might not have found Lunzie herself all that interesting a character
|
3: the death of sleep
enjoyed the fill-in of the story of Lunzie. I had read The stories of her great-great-great granddaughter before reading this story.
|
4: Lamest . . . Plot . . . Ever (Warning, review contains spoilers!)
The only reason I can find for anybody finishing this book is if they promised somebody they would. Why do I say that? Because the story, as told, makes absolutely NO sense.
Lunzie, our heroine goes off to make money so she can return for her daughter and emigrate from Earth. Her ship has an accident, and she spends sixty years in cold sleep. After her lifepod is picked up, she then spends the next two years desperately trying to find and contact her daughter. She succeeds and makes arrangements to meet her daughter on Earth. To get there, she signs on as a doctor on a luxury cruise liner. The liner has a disaster.(Think _Titanic_) Many passengers and crew escape and are rescued, but Lunzie gets another ten years in cold sleep awaiting help. After she's revived (again) she finally reaches Earth, only to find a tearful "Why did you change your mind?" message from her daughter. At that point, the book completely melted down.
1. Lunzie was CREW on the liner. If some escaped and others didn't, did the words "missing and presumed dead" never occur to anybody, either the characters OR the authors?
2. Daughter is almost certainly alive at age eighty-five, in an era of 120-year-plus lifespans. Lunzie makes absolutely NO further effort to contact her daughter or even find out where she is.
This makes, as I said, NO sense.
A friend of mine once, when asked what he thought of Anne McCaffrey as a writer, told me he avoided her books because they were so violent. When I asked him, in disbelief, why he said that, he replied: "Because she does so much violence to logic and common sense."
I now know *EXACTLY* how he felt, and why. Avoid this one at all costs.
|
5: Where's the conclusion???
I was enjoying this book thoroughly until it came to its abrupt end. There was no sense of completion, no tying up of loose ends, nothing. The book simply ended in the middle of a new conflict. This ruined the entire experience... I would NOT recommend this book unless you enjoy being left hanging.
|
|
|
|
|
