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A review by crofteereader
Encounter at Jupiter (Wine Dark Deep, #2) by R. Peter Keith
3.0
I will admit that the majority of this book, while intellectually stimulating (honestly, this book reads smart - not like it's being dumbed down for the audience, though it must be) was not as engaging as the clear-objective adventure of the previous book. I'm again struck by the notion that something came before this series to explain the who and why of it all. Because, even at the end of book two, we don't really know what the objective of this mission is (beyond Jupiter, which is a planet not an objective) or anything about the personal lives of the crew (though we did get a little tidbit that pilot Sarah Samuels is from Boston).
A few other things that got me: Cal is always referred to as Cal and Inez as Inez, but the doctor (whose name is Susan, I think) is called the Doc almost always, Xu Zuoren is sometimes called Xu sometimes called the science officer sometimes Zuoren, the pilot is the same, and the engineer is sometimes referred to by his title, the color of his spacesuit, his first name, his last name, or his full name. There aren't so many people that we can't just use their names - or at least what they call each other (though the fact that everyone but the doctor gets called by name kind of gets me). To similar effect, there are many scenes when there are 3+ characters having a conversation without dialogue tags; maybe I'm supposed to guess who's talking and maybe the who isn't actually important, but it still caused me to stumble a bit.
What I did like: aliens! And these are aliens that are so, you know, alien to our human space crew that it feels more believable. We spend the entire book not having really any idea what the alien (or is it aliens?) wants, how it behaves, what it understands about the humans and the ship. And that creates a very real sense of panic among the crew. And though the ending was very abrupt, it left us in a place that has me very excited to pick up book three!
{Thank you Smith Publicity and Uphill Downhill Press for the review copies of the Wine Dark Deep series in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}
A few other things that got me: Cal is always referred to as Cal and Inez as Inez, but the doctor (whose name is Susan, I think) is called the Doc almost always, Xu Zuoren is sometimes called Xu sometimes called the science officer sometimes Zuoren, the pilot is the same, and the engineer is sometimes referred to by his title, the color of his spacesuit, his first name, his last name, or his full name. There aren't so many people that we can't just use their names - or at least what they call each other (though the fact that everyone but the doctor gets called by name kind of gets me). To similar effect, there are many scenes when there are 3+ characters having a conversation without dialogue tags; maybe I'm supposed to guess who's talking and maybe the who isn't actually important, but it still caused me to stumble a bit.
What I did like: aliens! And these are aliens that are so, you know, alien to our human space crew that it feels more believable. We spend the entire book not having really any idea what the alien (or is it aliens?) wants, how it behaves, what it understands about the humans and the ship. And that creates a very real sense of panic among the crew. And though the ending was very abrupt, it left us in a place that has me very excited to pick up book three!
{Thank you Smith Publicity and Uphill Downhill Press for the review copies of the Wine Dark Deep series in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}