Customer Reviews

The Engines of Dawn

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is what people might call "a light novel". It's not too deep, but it has a very engaging story. At times, I found I couldn't stop reading despite late hour and lack of sleep :) It has some interesting ideas, and it's written to the point with not too much long and boring background. As for the bad reviews it got? I can't argue with them, the book has its bad points (again - not too deep, very thin character development), but if you don't expect to read a masterpiece, and are just looking for a few hours of enjoyable reading, this book should be very satisfying!

Although I wouldn't have expressed it with the same degree of vehemence, many of the 1 and 2 star reviews already here do highlight the problems I have with this book. I am very surprised to see it rated so highly be so many. It does demonstrate some clever ideas and has a few compelling moments, but overall I was very disappointed. The writing doesn't come across well and the characters are not presented with any sort of depth or believability. It's a basic requirement of any good story that you find something in at least some of the characters that you can either identify with or want to know more about, and that's completely lacking here. The author also does a lot of things that are a slap in the face of willing suspension of disbelief (naming all the starships after porn actresses, for example). That sort of deliberate choice doesn't help you buy into the story.

If you are curious about this book, find a copy from someone or stop by a bookstore and read the first 3 pages. They pretty much establish the quality of the writing and overall tone for the whole book. If you don't like that much of it, you probably won't like any of it.

This is the first book I've ever read by Paul Cook and I was very surprised by the quality of the writing and by the novel's plot structure. At first, I thought the book was going to be a typical adventure story, but it quickly took off in its own direction. And the ending completely surprised the hell out of me! I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to read a well-plotted, well-written SF novel with all kinds of new concepts and interesting characters.

I purchased this book based on the overwhelming good reviews here at Amazon. I have never been driven more astray. To call this book anything other than juvenile is a misrepresentation.

Engines of Dawn lives in a poorly disguised "Star Trek Next Generation" universe. Which in and of itself would be forgivable if the character development and plot lines were better, they aren't.

It's really so poor that I nearly didn't finish it. I didn't care about the characters, the plot is full of holes and the silly Star Trekness of it all is just a mess.

A compelling idea for a novel that just went all wrong.

Avoid this book.

The basic premise of this novel is promising, and could form the core of a well-crafted and absorbing book. Unfortunately, "The Engines of Dawn" is not that book.

The writing is often awkward and cliche-ridden ("He sported a black mustache of military smartness, and his snappy gray tunic had nary a crease"), and the characters are largely cardboard cut-outs, their actions and emotions changing from moment to moment according to the demands of the plot rather than any plausible inner motivation.

The editors seem to have skipped the continuity-checking phase, and problems abound. In the book's first pages we are told that the characters' clothing is a smart nanotech construct that can be made to flow on and off of their bodies at will. But that fact is never mentioned again, and by the end of the book we have someone in "a torn tunic". While orbiting a planet, someone mentions casually that because of the topography there are probably "surface winds in excess of two hundred miles an hour"; but when they go down to the surface they take no precautions against such winds, there are in fact no such winds, and no one comments on the fact. On one page we are told that there are only four known Earthlike planets; later we are told that a particular kind of ivy is found on "a number of worlds". And so on. Much of the technology is quite implausible also.

More seriously, the books' basic plot device is equally shaky: a Good Alien has an important secret that the humans must know, so he concocts an elaborate, dangerous, and utterly implausible plot to strand their ship in space in hopes that they will take refuge on and explore a word that contains vague hints about the truth (hints that, as far as the alien could have known, were utterly unlikely to actually reveal the truth to the humans). Rather than, say, writing the secret down and slipping it under someone's door.

Which isn't to say that it's a totally awful book. The awkward writing was only irritating, and I was interested enough in what the big secret was that I stayed up late last night to finish it. But there are lots and lots of better books out there...

In the Engines of Dawn by Paul Cook, frat boy-cum-physics-instructor Ben Bennett and his three drop-out buddies liberate humanity from the evil aliens slowly, methodically, sapping all humans of their intelligence and sex drive.

I'd give the actual story concept at least 3 stars, but the execution is terrible. For some reason, Cook has to give every character a complete dossier after mentioning their name. For instance: Bob Jones, a large, muscular, redheaded man, turned on the lights. Childish sexual innuendo is all over the place, really distracting from the seriousness of the story.

Don't get me wrong, this book can be entertaining, in that cheezy, late night B-movie kind of way, but if you want thought-provoking literature, don't waste any time with the Engines of Dawn.

When I originally checked the reviews for this novel, everyone was saying it was brainless and juvenille. I partially disagree. The book is light, and the foreshadowing is heavy, but the writing is good and plotline has no gaping holes. Not all books about rocket science have to read like a book on rocket science (and yes, they do a little rocket science in there - kinda). It's as thought provoking as the reader desires - deep or shallow. I suggest those who don't like the book to wait til their mood shifts, and read it again.

This is an appallingly weak book. The character development is pathetic, and the plot is juvenile. None of the action is believable, nor is the science, politics or dialogue. Paul Cook can't write very well at all. He writes as if he were a below average high school student doing his creative writing homework assignment while watching TV. Every few pages there was something bogus, arbitrarily concocted, inexplicable or logically flawed. I wouldn't bother reading it if I were you. I am sorry that my girlfriend wasted her money buying this book (for some reason I had put it on my wishlist).

Contrast this with the SF book I read just before "The Engines of Dawn" which was "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars gives you fully developed, believable characters and dialogue, lots of real science, politics and human drama, and it is written very well indeed. I can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy (Green Mars and Blue Mars).

First of all, this novel should have been a short story, where P. Cook would hand over his idea to someone who can actually write.

The characters are either extremely cliche or have no more than two personality traits. The space travel is based on bogus science that doesn't even seem plausible (I know this is a sci-fi novel, but many authors have succeeded at presenting a scientific world which makes some sort of sense) in order to finish up to a predictable punchline. The aliens are either too mysterious to be described at all or are not interesting enough to actually read their descriptions. The world that is found by the explorers is exactly the same as earth - which leaves me with a question: why read sci-fi if I am to find at best a skewed description of my real world?

I usually like novels dealing with space travel and exploration of new worlds and civilizations, but unfortunately, despite the amount of effort I put into giving this book a chance, I cannot say I like it at all. The style is extremely choppy, things that happen are not explained at all or explained too much, certain characters are not necessary, and the plot doesn't really develop into anything. You read the back of the book and you know everything you'd like to know about this novel.

It almost appears that this novel was written as a description of a grade B sci-fi movie the author could have watched once. Unfortunately, the methods used to convey emotions, character traits, plot, and the mood are not always to be translated into the written form. I wish the author better luck next time. It would really help if he did some sort of research for his book, e.g. come up with plausible technology, make at least outlines for believable characters, and come up with a plot that would drive the novel to some extent.

I do not recommend this book to anyone - it'll leave you with a bad taste in your mouth and possibly spoil the fun of sci-fi for you.

Good complelling read. This the first book that has kept me up all night in a long time. Surprising that this book does not recieve some majoar complaints since it is essentially "anti-Morman." However, for me, it was still a very good book with a somewhat surprising end.