The Medusa Chronicles

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Enter 2016. Enter Stephen Baxter--an author I haven't read before, but doesn't give off the most sophisticated, original vibe if I read up on his books online. Enter a concept designed to sell: team up to write a sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's A Meeting With Medusa--"perhaps Clarke's last significant work of short fiction", as the authors formulate it in the afterword. Team up to enjoy the benefits of the other's credit. Team up to cash in!

I'm not sure who is responsible for the bulk of this mess, but a mess it is. Slow, cardboard, repetitive, generic.

Exhibit A.

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My advice to Reynolds would be: go back to working as an astrophysicist, and stop publishing a book every year... 15 novels since 2000, excluding short fiction and novellas? Quantity, quality, yada yada yada.

I wanted to quit The Medusa Chronicles after 100 pages, but I'm glad I didn't and pushed trough, as the finale is actually quite alright. The very end however does involve lots of quantum physical mumbo jumbo magic: the ultimate veneer of seriousness in so called Hard SF. The finale doesn't redeem this turd: 60 alright pages in a book of 409 is not the ratio I'm looking for.

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Please read the full review on Weighing A Pig...