Customer Reviews

A Grey Moon Over China

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm typically not one to write a review, but this book rose above the rest (not in a good way) to warrant a quick review.

A Grey Moon Over China, by Thomas A. Day, had me very excited from both the back cover blurb and the opening few chapters. Mr. Day writes in a very fast paced style that really drew me in... again, at first. The trouble started to occur and the book revealed more and more characters and further plot developments with less and less attention paid to fleshing anything out. While this didn't necessarily confuse me, it did disconnect me from the entirety of events as they occurred in rapid-fire succession over the course of many perspective years.

The book's interesting plot continues to entice as the plot unfolds, however it fails to deliver on any but the most superficial sense. I got the impression that Mr. Day ground a 500,000 word manuscript down to its current size, leaving out fluff such as character development and scene description. I gave up on the book when, around 2/3 of the way in, the main character's own unsurpassed genius (despite his continual relegation as ambassador schmuck) susses out obscure pseudo-scientific details known only to the author. I won't spoil it for anyone who might enjoy Mr. Day's style.

In the end, I would best describe this book as frustrating. Just like a wonderful movie concept spoiled at the hands of an awful director, I believe A Grey Moon Over China is an intriguing plot spoiled by the author.

I would argue that this book is not just Sci-Fi, but literature, in the classic sense. It tells a hard story in a heart-breaking way. A flawed hero's journey, away from, and back to, the broken self. It also looks at the fallout of what appears to be the pursuit of a dream, but is really just a flight from one's origins. It is not an easy read as Day just dumps you in the middle of a new world and does not explain much of the technology. Neither is it filled with joy. Killing, adults, children, and animals, in pursuit of a military goal, are all fair game here, as it is in real life. If you like the grim re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, you will be on solid ground here. Hope does inhabit this book, but only of the ragged sort where a weed springs up between two desolate rocks.

I wish I could have given 3.5 stars...
I am an avid sci-fi and occasional fantasy reader and was looking forward to reading this book. I had seen reviews and also was excited about another Portland Oregon author.

I didn't not like this book nearly as much as I though I would. I found it well written with characters that I could feel for. That being said...this book is so depressing. There isn't a stitch of joy to be found in its pages, with the possible exception of the baby near the end (don't want to be a spoiler). There is a little wonder to be found in the pages, but mostly sadness and bleak despair. I am okay with that if the book is satisfying, but this one wasn't for some reason. I almost put it down several times, because frankly I really wanted something 'happy' to happen. I am not a reader who expects fluff (I've read the Thomas Covenant Chronicles 3 times, talk about depressing). I just found this book bleak. Perhaps if there was a sequel, I was dying of curiosity re. Serenitas after all. I recommended this book to my husband and am curious to see if he shares my thoughts on this read.

Earth in the 2020's, energy problems, political problems, food problems, and a group of people who want to get away from it all through a space portal . Good and interesting concepts, long and convoluted execution. Figured out who the "bad guys" would be (had to be) early on in the book, but kept waiting for one of the "smart" characters to figure it out; that didn't happen 'til near the end. Plenty of characters to hate, few that are likeable. And one that just doesn't make sense at all. I kept thinking that the book would get to the point of tying the loose ends together, but it really only happened in an Agatha Christie/deux ex machina way. Disappointing.

"Grey Moon Over China" is quintessential space opera, so if you're dismayed at how sci-fi bookshelves are becoming increasingly dominated by fantasy and "alternate history," this isn't a bad choice. It's also a fairly ambitious debut for new author Thomas A. Day. The story isn't bad, though it seems just a tad derivitive: A group of humans stumble across promising technology which allows them to lead an exodus from a near-future Earth that's slowly falling apart ... only to be confronted by machines they have created to chart the way, machines that have since evolved and rebelled. Sound familiar? The story is pretty grim at times, not that I have a problem with that; I've slogged through worse. What bothered me most about this book was the narrative, which I found pretty choppy and unfocused and occasionally confusing. I found myself skimming over a lot of it, and I am normally a very deliberate reader.

The blurbs promise an interesting premise -- the achievement of interstellar travel in the near future. Sort of like Gordon Dickson's "Mission Universe" or James Blish's "Cities in Flight." Unfortunately, Mr. Day fails to deliver.

If, in the first 150 pages you cannot create characters that are more than cardboard cutouts, if you cannot create a believable motivation for the protagonist's wish to reach the stars, you have wasted my time and money. Example -- early on, one of the characters shoots two people in cold blood. I re-read the section several times, searching for the motivation, in vain.

The problem is not the oppressively grim tone. The problem is an inability to move a plot along, to make dialogue and actions serve that purpose. And, I suspect that this derives from the fact that Mr. Day has published little, if any, short fiction. A Google search reveals no other published works.

This is a common failing, I think, among newer authors. They want to hit it big with a book, and get noticed; and unfortunately the market does reward book-length works more than short fiction. But without the discipline that mastering short fiction imposes -- in 7500 words you have to create a world, create three-dimensional characters, invent a plot, create conflict, reach resolution, and achieve catharsis -- you have meandering, sloppy mess where characters are merely props for whatever plot exists, and the dialogue is empty and elliptical at times.

Maybe after a few more tries, Mr. Day will get it, but this is not a promising debut.

It's a shame this book did not get more buzz. It will, I believe, become a classic of science fiction in the future. It's almost an old-school SF tale of epic wars and interstellar colonization and space battles and a frightening inhuman adversary, but the grim near-future setting resonates with the anxieties we feel today. Oil wars and environmental catastrophes are what drive the main characters to flee Earth, but they bring all of Earth's troubles with them, and find space is no more hospitable than the hell they left behind. All of the characters are complex and difficult and hard-edged, they all do what think is necessary and sometimes they screw up in epic fashion, and there are always consequences.

It's not a fun read, as most of the novel consists of the struggling colonists experiencing one failure after another, death after death, and their situation continuously going from bad to worse. There's lots of action, but very little victory. If grim and depressing SF isn't your thing, you'll want to skip this book. But the human conflicts are realistic, and it's easy to see humans expanding into space and behaving in just this way. There is a glimmer of hope at the very end, but it's almost buried under the weight of destruction and loss that has preceded it. Nonetheless, I highly recommend this for fans of hard-edged contemporary science fiction.

If you like your hard science fiction neatly packaged (the early Larry Niven), then leave this alone. The book is missing a huge amount of background and plot development. The story is worth the effort, however. Day's next book will tell us if he can craft the background as well as he can create an amazing set of events without context. The potential is here for true greatness.....we'll see.

I enjoyed this novel quite a bit. It is not easy reading, but the prose is excellent. The characters are well-defined and interesting. I liked Torres, Polaski, Patel, Pham and the minor characters as well. The 'quantum battery' is an ingenious device on which a large part of the book pivots.
The world is a mess and incessant wars roil earth. Torres figures a way out and enlists Polaski to help him. After that, the epic begins.
The book is tragic but hope is always present
I look forward to more from this author.

This is a very sad story, as others have said. Nevertheless, it's one of the best novels I've read. Life, as the literature professors will tell you, is a tragedy. Yet there is often joy and humor along the way and so it is here. So I was sorry to see the story end, especially the way it did, but I didn't feel tricked or surprised. At least the protagonist had one companion left, even if it was only a worry-wart robot with a Welsh accent.

I always assume space colonization stories will be hopeful, but the colonists often wind up losing much of their high technology as it wears out and they are unable to replace it. They sometimes can't even go back into space, let alone travel across it again. This one is a little different. But it's also a vindication of Murphy's Law. What they hope to escape, they wind up taking with them. The technology they create to help them turns on them. But the turning is to their ultimate benefit, once they figure it out. They succeed in spite of themselves, something you may only realize after you've thought about it a bit.