Between Two Evils

Completely unreadable. Huge disappointment.

I am a big fan of Daniel Suarez's other novels and pre-ordered this one. I won't make that mistake again.

The first chapter of this book is incomprehensible. It reads like random words out of a quantum physics textbook strung together with cheap beer references. If there's a plot, I couldn't find it, only tons of technical jargon that I had to slog through, wondering the whole time when the story was going to start.

Here's a sample:
“I needed a charged superconducting sheet. The quantum mechanical nonlocalizability of the negatively charged Cooper pairs, protected from the localizing effect of decoherence by an energy gap, causes the pairs to undergo nongeodesic motion in the presence of a gravitational wave.”

And another:
“The surrounding non-superconducting ionic lattice is localized and so executes geodesic motion, moving along with space-time, while the Cooper pairs execute non-geodesic motion— thereby accelerating relative to space-time. The different motions lead to a separation of charge. That charge separation causes the graphene to become electrically polarized, generating a restoring Coulomb force. The back action of the Coulomb force on the Cooper pairs magnifies the mass supercurrents generated by the wave— producing a reflection.”

And still another (in the first effing chapter!):
“Yes, but the deBroglie wavelength of the BEC is on the order of a millimeter, whereas the gravity field wavelength is effectively infinite— which means gravity can move it around. If the de Broglie wavelength can be made longer than the gravity wavelength, we can in principle isolate the BEC from the gravity wave.”

Disclaimer:
I stopped slogging through Influx after the first chapter. If you find the above three paragraphs thrilling and though-provoking, then maybe you'll enjoy the book. I didn't want to waste any more time.

A big let down. TERRIBLE metaphors all through the first few chapters of the book. The story wanders around. Characters splash back and forth, doing things that seem random, making choices based on things the author TELLS us. Violence and lust are tossed in to prop up the story, but aren't believable and don't work. This novel hangs around the neck of the first, hoping to use the heat of the original to fuel it. It fails.

Patchy writing. Some scenes are very well written; some scenes are not. A few of the metaphors were bad enough that I put the book down for a day or two, unable to believe an editor would let them get through. Four is well-drawn, but the other characters not so much. Motivations are told to the reader, not shown. Still, worth reading, if only to get you thinking about your faction.

10% of the book was 4 stars. 90% was 1 star. Where was the editor?

It started out well, but fell off quickly. I didn't finish reading it.