CRATER by Homer Hickam

Crater is a 2012 young-adult science fiction novel by Homer Hickam, and the first in his Helium-3 trilogy. Crater, a teenage lunar miner, accompanies one of his company’s helium-3 convoys in pursuit of an objective that led to the deaths of two others who tried to obtain it.

Hickam has been a coal miner and a NASA engineer. Not surprisingly, Crater’s lunar mining operations, living conditions, moon physics, and use of helium-3 are well thought out. There are also a lot of good moon facts in here, as well. Hickam’s setup and world-building (of the moon, anyway) are the highlights of the book.  

Hickam’s storytelling is less impressive. Crater himself is hard to root for because even though he’s good-hearted and capable, he’s also a clueless, pouty bumpkin with inexplicable low self-esteem. Almost every other character is flat, and many have the reasoning power of small children. The novel has two kinds of villains, crowhoppers and demons, and not only are they exactly the same, they’re also largely incompetent. Plot developments and resolutions are often convenient and unrealistic. The romance is horrendous. The story even stops for two pages near the end so Hickam can get in a quick sermon against government regulation. The overall effect is that the novel feels like a Saturday morning cartoon with a bunch of killing.

Crater features little in the way of suspense, even though Hickam tries desperately to generate some in the final act using one of the cheapest writer’s tricks of all time – hiding from the reader plot information known to all the characters. Nor does the MacGuffin-driven plot attract much interest, nor the cartoon characters that populate Hickam’s moon.

All of this is really too bad, because Crater felt like it had a lot of potential when it got started. In the end, though, it was a disappointment.

NOT RECOMMENDED

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

THE LOVE & RESPECT EXPERIENCE by Emerson Eggerichs

The Love & Respect Experience: A Husband-Friendly Devotional that Wives Truly Love (2011) is a Christian devotional for married couples by Emerson Eggerichs based on his very worthwhile Love & Respect book (2004) and curriculum.

The Love & Respect Experience consists of 52 devotionals of three or four pages each, covering such topics as the differences between men and women, love, respect, forgiveness, prayer, sex, being positive, focusing on God, anger, and humility.

There’s a great deal of exhortation here, but not a lot of discussion material that doesn’t potentially involve picking at one another’s flaws. Instead, there are plenty of things to do and not do. The effect of this is that The Love & Respect Experience often feels like a Christian self-help book dressed up as a devotional.

The discussion questions for each devotional are in the back of the book rather than with the corresponding chapter. That may sound trivial, but it’s a major blow to user-friendliness. Once you track your questions down, there tend to be a lot of “yes/no” questions and reading comprehension questions, and not always a lot for fruitful discussion.

The book is heavily billed as being “geared toward men,” yet, beyond one devotional about John Wooden and another about Tom Coughlin, I was hard pressed to find evidence of this, whether in theme or town. I never felt like it was geared to me. My wife and I pray together on a daily basis, although we don’t usually do a devotional. I picked this up because I thought this was worth a shot, but neither of us ever got into it.

The Love & Respect Experience also includes a brief explanation of Eggerichs’ three cycles of marriage, as outlined in Love & Respect, but familiarity with the material in Love & Respect helps quite a bit in working through these devotionals, and some of the material may be confusing or not useful otherwise.

While the content in The Love & Respect Experience is good, it just doesn’t work well as a devotional, at least to me – no doubt some will find it quite helpful, and that’s great. The rest of us, however, might be better off sticking with the original Love & Respect and trying to meet our devotional needs elsewhere.

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

HARBINGER by Sean Danker-Smith

Harbinger is a 2012 science fiction thriller by Sean Danker-Smith. Here, a mysterious gun-toting loner type and his unwanted tagalong sidekick investigate sinister doings in a small Washington town.

Danker-Smith’s story is straight-faced on the surface, but at the same time, he doesn’t take it particularly seriously. Harbinger is shamelessly self-aware, with its most obvious references being those to Resident Evil, the zombie genre, and too many ridiculous action movies to count. It never feels particularly ambitious from a literary standpoint; Danker-Smith seems completely concerned with getting a sci-fi thriller movie onto paper, and that’s okay.

The pacing here is generally good; the horror sensibilities are certainly there. Danker-Smith generates some good tension at the beginning and a solid final act, although the middle drags a bit in places, mostly because of conversations that are overlong and don’t advance the story; a number are of substantially greater interest to the characters than to the reader. Harbinger is stronger when it focuses on Frank, who generally gets things done and makes the story go, than on the interminably contrary and less sympathetic Galya. However, none of these storytelling foibles are egregious; the writing, on the whole, is solid, although Harbinger sometimes feels like it could have used one more polish.

The characters tend to move from one plot point to the next with a fair degree of speed and convenience, and it’s rare that the reader feels that they are in any real peril. It is as if the adventure’s degree of difficulty is too low for their abilities, which, naturally, saps some of the suspense. To some extent, this feels deliberate, that Danker-Smith is thumbing his nose at the conventions of the genres in which he’s writing. Similarly, Danker-Smith’s computer hacking is the stuff of TV shows and summer blockbusters (although his level of attention to detail on firearms is phenomenally high). Again, though, this feels like it may be deliberate. The overall effect may take some getting used to, but it works well enough.

In the end, Harbinger is an enjoyable page-turner, and it seems content with achieving that status. The reader should be content as well.

RECOMMENDED

*More Sean Danker-Smith at www.silverbaytimes.com