Customer Reviews

Death Dream

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is my first taste of the prolific and lauded Ben Bova. He is a good writer, he is definitely strong on character development. This is one of the drawbacks of this book. We get to know the characters well enough, but in doing so, Bova stifles the pacing of his book. This would work great on the movie screen; there are some really original and exciting virtual "games" going on here. There aren't a lot of characters to like in this book, although Dan certainly goes through hell to best his lifetime friend, Jason. Dan's wife, Susan, is whiny and sometimes I wanted to slap her; the daughter is a typical little brat, and what Uncle Kyle wants to do to her is pretty sick. WE get a lot of background on why Kyle Muncrief wants little Angela so bad, though.
If Bova had cut some of the excess fat off this book, it would have been a stunner!

It was a tiresome chore to finish this book. Character development and dialogue were a mixture of whiny, flat, and goofballish. The research behind the writing seems superficial, at best, and the end is fairly obvious early on.

I read it through, just to see what happened, but I really should have just quit early on. I found it to be a terrible read. The technology was very dated--many sci fi authors are able to write about technology in ways that won't make readers ten years hence laugh. I could even forgive that, honestly, if the rest of it were so damned bad. Perhaps his other works are better, but the characterization in this one is completely juvenile.

Many authors introduce a character, and give little bits and pieces of description and characterization over the course of interactions with them. Bova introduces a character, then spends a paragraph describing that person, then giving them a nickname, then not using that nickname. He also seemed to think we'd forget the character's whole names if he called them by only their first names, because Victoria Kessel was hardly ever seen as just Victoria or Vicky. Same with many of the other characters.

The protagonists were unlikeable. There was actually one passage where it described the woman demanding her job as a reference librarian allow her to work from home because she had a BAAAAAAAAAYBEEEEE...and that if she didn't get her way, she'd to to the press and stomp her feet and tell them that the mean, evil library was discriminating against mothers. They agreed to let her do this, and she then proceeded to start charging people for her services as a reference librarian--even while she was being paid by the library--until she'd built up enough clients for a small business, ditching the library. Nice.

This book may have been significantly better if it had several things: A strong editor, fewer name brands of machines, and more cryptic treatment of the plot exposition. We learn MUCH too early on what is going on behind the scenes, and this makes the resolution very anticlimactic.

One more thing: The sex scenes are pretty juvenile. Considering the rest of the book reads like it's written for a pre-teen audience, they just feel incongruous.

This book was written very well. Featuring a slew of fun, dysfunctional characters, it would only take a small stretch of existential angst for me to give it a 5th star. As it is, though, it is merely a precautionary tale of the dangers that virtual reality may bring to the world. Precautionary tales are nice, and sometimes they are fun (like this one is), but they don't really have the meaning to earn that 5th star.

This is the first book I have read by Mr. Bova, and I think that it is good, with some small imperfections. He has a certain writing style that is somewhat stilted to me, and it is sometimes hard to read. I can't place my finger on exactly what it is, though. It may be overusage of the character's names, or it may be the fact that the characters are a bit hackneyed, but whatever it is, it is somewhat annoying, like a tiny piece of flesh hanging from the top of your mouth...you know what it is and you want to fix it, but you can't really get directly at it, so you just worry it around with your tongue.

Other than the lack of any real substance and the small writing annoyance, the book was very good overall, and I am quite impressed. Don't get me wrong, the book is fun to read, and I will read it again sometime in the future, it just won't alter my perceptions of the world in any measurable fashion.

It is an exciting book, though, and it is fun to see Kyle Muncrief's whole world fall down around his sick, twisted feet, and I can't see why anyone should have to face repercussions for the consequences of his last VR sim.

That's just me though. Read it, enjoy it, and pass it on. Definitely a buyer.
Harkius

My initial thoughts when I saw a VR related story made me cringe. All I could think of are all the Late Night B Movies that so make VR an unattractive subject.

I got the audio version from the library on the simple fact that Ben Bova is an established fiction author. Suprisingly I enjoyed this quit a bit. The audio version had me anticipating what would happen next more from the story than from the reading of the story.

If the reading was done a bit more like acting things out I probably would have gave this a five stars. At least they had some different sounding voices for some of the characters but the reader's ability to switch between character voices had some flaws.

This story based on VR technology really did get my thoughts going on the dangers of other pieces of technology. Interesting and entertaining story.

How do you review a book that is perfectly enjoyable up until about page 450, and then you suddenly realize that the conclusion is not going to be a great revelation? Early on I greatly enjoyed this book and the occasional flashbacks into the characters pasts were quite interesting. I also realized as I was reading this book that there's not a whole lot of action and the book probably could have been trimmed by about 150 pages. But in the end, I feel as though I got led in circles. Who is the Inquisitor? Who does he represent? What about the foreign investors? What about Disney possibly buying out ParaReality? So many ideas are introduced and nothing comes of any of them. I'll give one of his other books a shot, but this was a bit of a disapointment. Good first 450 pages, though.

Well, this book is a hard one to rate, although I loved reading it, i'm not sure, I can read it again, its got an aweful amount of minipulation, on the worst possible level, and if you cant stand minipulation, perhaps you should get this book from a library before you buy it, so I gave it a 10. On the other hand, the book is well set up, and besides the minipulation, a joy to read, so if your a Ben Bova collecter, or just a fan, buy the book

The theme of manipulation through virtual reality is unsettling in that it is so possible, but the book is well done and interesting to read. One of Ben's best efforts.

Although Bova tends toward the odd and strange ways of men dealing with children and society, DEATH DREAM is a great book. The only reason it does not deserve 5 stars is because the descriptive nature is not quite as good as it could be. I would reccommend this book to anyone interested in computers or VR.

How can I get in contact with Ben Bova? I am doing a project on virtual reality, and I was hoping he could help, but if anyone else can, that would be great!