Customer Reviews

Death of Sleep

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

 

 

Other reviewers may not have liked this book, but Mom & I both enjoyed it. Great concept, and it leaves things open for GENERATION WARRIORS to continue the story. Lunzie's frustration over being in cold sleep so often adds to the story tension, leading the reader to wonder not only if she will succeed or fail in what she does, but if she'll find herself in cold sleep again, and have to re-certify herself as a doctor -- again. Deals with issues that most authors may have forgotten about, such as having to get updated in technological and medical advances that occurred while she was asleep, and the whole issue of back pay.

This book suffers from the ills of collaborative efforts. Although I don't know any of the details of the arrangement between McCaffrey and Nye, I'd guess that Nye wrote the book based on McCaffrey's concept.

Half way through the book I began to wonder if this was going to be another of those multi-volume stories where seeds planted in the first book bear fruit but are never answered six or ten books later.

If intended to be a one volume book, as another review has pointed out, this one has no ending. Nothing gets resolved; very little is learned; the main character has not changed in any remarkable way; and the story is not over.

The only reason I can find for anybody finishing this book is if they promised somebody they would. Why do I say that? Because the story, as told, makes absolutely NO sense.

Lunzie, our heroine goes off to make money so she can return for her daughter and emigrate from Earth. Her ship has an accident, and she spends sixty years in cold sleep. After her lifepod is picked up, she then spends the next two years desperately trying to find and contact her daughter. She succeeds and makes arrangements to meet her daughter on Earth. To get there, she signs on as a doctor on a luxury cruise liner. The liner has a disaster.(Think _Titanic_) Many passengers and crew escape and are rescued, but Lunzie gets another ten years in cold sleep awaiting help. After she's revived (again) she finally reaches Earth, only to find a tearful "Why did you change your mind?" message from her daughter. At that point, the book completely melted down.

1. Lunzie was CREW on the liner. If some escaped and others didn't, did the words "missing and presumed dead" never occur to anybody, either the characters OR the authors?

2. Daughter is almost certainly alive at age eighty-five, in an era of 120-year-plus lifespans. Lunzie makes absolutely NO further effort to contact her daughter or even find out where she is.

This makes, as I said, NO sense.

A friend of mine once, when asked what he thought of Anne McCaffrey as a writer, told me he avoided her books because they were so violent. When I asked him, in disbelief, why he said that, he replied: "Because she does so much violence to logic and common sense."

I now know *EXACTLY* how he felt, and why. Avoid this one at all costs.

Lunzie Mespil leaves her 14-year-old daughter, Fiona, with friends on the colony planet where she planned to settle before the authorities there eliminated the job for which she had just relocated. Single mother Lunzie's skills as a physician specializing in space-caused mental traumas are very much needed on a distant mining platform. Once she's earned a decent nest egg (or maybe more) there, she will return to the child she's never left before. A couple of years, Lunzie believes. But space has other ideas, and Lunzie winds up taking refuge in cold sleep after the ship in which she's traveling is destroyed. She wakes more than 60 years later. Where is Fiona? And what's more important, how is Fiona? What kind of life has she had, without her mother to guide her through adolescence into womanhood?

In this first book of McCaffrey's "Planet Pirates" series, written as a prequel to the others, the authors speculate about the impact on human lives of being interrupted by the familiar SF device of cold sleep. What will it be like, to wake in a universe that's gone on without you for years - decades - maybe even centuries? To find that your loved ones have moved on through their lives, your profession has changed so much that you have to relearn it (or choose to master a different one instead), and that even holding a conversation with people who've been awake all along can be problematic?

The book's episodic plot works fine, and the lead-in to DINOSAUR PLANET (next in the series) is handled smoothly. But it's the questions Lunzie has to answer that fascinated this reader, who otherwise might not have found Lunzie herself all that interesting a character

I liked most of the book until she stopped looking for her daughter with no explanation why. She starts relationships and Anne McCaffrey seems to use disaters and a return to cold sleep to end the relationships.

There is 'someone' after Lunzie for about 3/4 of the book. Near the end she and her co-workers have outsmarted them and will await rescue. Bamm, the book ends, no idea who was after Lunzie, if they are rescued. Very disappointed even as much as I love McCaffrey.

This book is split into different parts, and others have already written summaries, so I won't bother going into details. There are some interesting and mysterious aliens that get introduced, obviously hold some significance, but are ignored (Theks). There are story-lines that are created, and abandoned at whim as the main character is dropped into cold-sleep again and again, which is ok, as it means there's more challenges to face when she wakes up. That said, book really takes a random different direction in the last part, the writing becomes rushed, and the story just ends with nothing resolved.
Different people have said that Dinosaur planet, or Sassinak (main character's great great granddaughter or something) come next, but neither seems to mention the main character at all, although evidently she comes back in Generation Warriors... but, I most likely won't bother reading them, and there's something really frustrating about being in Iraq, wanting a good sci-fi diversion, then getting caught up in this story. Even though it starts falling apart from the beginning you hope it all comes together- it just wanders around and falls apart some more before just deciding to give up and end! ARGH!!!!
It could have been sooooo good, but it wasn't, and that's another frustrating thing about it!

Poor Lunzie, nothing every goes right for her. The concept of stasis and passage of time is a conflict that many story lines have examined. I do like the problems that she faces, but I wish she would concentrate more on picking oup the pieces. I don't know about you, but most people would never leave a planet again. This is a light read and is enjoyable if you have read the other stories including the Sassinak series and dinosaur planet. Some of the necessary character development is missing in this book and relies on the other books.

Ann McCaffrey has lost it. What a disappointment after her early Pern and Dinosaur Planet and The Ship Who Sang novels. This book doesn't deserve a 'one-star' rating, but that's the lowest we can give it.

The Death of Sleep. This is a potentially interesting concept which has here been badly abused. One wonders if the co-authors were working on an unreasonable deadline. It's too long not to be a novel, but it reads like synopsis into which they arbitrarily dubbed dialogue on random pages.

The incidental characters were often more clearly depicted than the major characters ... and more appealing, as well. The character of Lunzie Mespil (sounds like a pseudo-scientific a name for phlegm) shows no significant development.

The plot, to abuse the term, rambles like a dipsomaniacal slattern. Never moving at better than a walking pace, it imposes upon the reader the teeth-gritting frustration of waiting for something to happen, some point to be made. It should be read aloud by my high-school biology teacher in punishment for his having bored generations of students with his monotone style. Plot elements were introduced, then ignored. Perhaps McCaffrey and Nye lost track of what they were trying to do?

The only original wrinkle in this Rip Van Winkle Rip-off is the cultural concept that vegetarianism is an ethical imperative. Which shouldn't be a surprise, as there is no meat to this book.

I found this book to be enoyable reading. Anne McCaffrey does her usual good job with the character development and relationships. The only problem was in that it ended before the story ended.

The series starts out great with "Sassinak" but comes to a dead stop with "The Death Of Sleep". This is the most boring book I have ever read! It's one huge sidetrack. If you read the "Planet Pirate" series, *ignore* this book. You can read the first and last books and not miss a thing...