Customer Reviews

The Ark

I found the plot twists very entertaining and consider the lack of some background information of little concern.

I certainly wasn't worried about the author missing out any quasi-scientific explanation for currently-impossible techniques. This is something that's missing from a large proportion of S.F. stories.

This book has joined the select list of those I can enjoy reading several times - despite being published in a young-adult category.

By the way - I guess the author assumed the existing U.K. had finally merged with the European Union and that the Royal Family had taken their remaining supporters with them into space.

I understand that this was meant to be written to a Young Adult audience (hence it being published by Scholastic), but writing to a younger age does not mean that an author can ignore the science in science-fiction. For example, it is written that aliens have devised this sort of space-stretching transportation device that allows light-years to be crossed in seconds (think of Madeliene L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME and her fourth dimension theory). However, Jeapes offers no scientific theory as to how these work. Make a theory up of you have to, but you can't offer nothing!

Second, Jeapes suggests that that some tragedy has befallen the United Kingdom and now all of their citizens live on a giant spaceship. No, I'm not kidding. And even worse, we never find out why they are on this spaceship (what happened to the old England?)! Rather disappointing in terms of background information.

In conclusion, Jeapes has managed to start off with a novel that has a fairly decent plot, but loses its way via the above. Although Jeapes' writing doesn't have as great character writing as that in RAMA II, or the awesome space battles of Tim Zahn (HEIR TO THE EMPIRE), it will be interesting to see how Jeapes' writing matures in the future, and I look forward to reading his next, and hopefully more polished, novel.