Customer Reviews

Helix

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

 

 

There is so much wrong with Helix but there is also much to like. The central conceit of the story - that there is a huge, helical structure that houses thousands of cylindrical worlds - would lead one to expect a 'hard' SF novel but that isn't the case. The titular helix is a feat of imagination and not one of engineering and Brown clearly has no idea (or concern for) how or why it was built or even why the structure is a helix rather than any other shape. His characters are lazy constructions that rely on silly coincidences to generate personalities. The background stories pad out the tale to no effect. Pages of set up regarding Hendry's daughter all come to nought. The Kaluchek/Olembe dynamic is played out over 500 pages and then negates itself when the basis of their conflict is discovered to be false. These are all faults that could have been resolved with some editorial direction and the excision of a hundred or so pages.

The curious thing is that, even with all these gripes, Helix is enjoyable. It's fast paced, cinematic and wondrous. The reader is carried along at such a rate that faults are smoothed over due to the sheer speed of the narrative.

[...]

In the future, humanity destroys the Earth with their constant wars and by ravaging the land without giving anything back. Earth's end is in site. The European Space Organization (ESO) secretly builds a vast colony ship (named the Lovelock), trains key personnel to crew it, and readies over four thousand coldsleep pods for the humans chosen to begin life anew on another world. Terrorists object to anyone leaving Earth, thus ESO must keep everything as secret as possible. With only minor interference, the Lovelock launches, taking with it the only real hope the human race has for survival.

Five hundred light-years later (one thousand years standard Earth time), Lovelock is torn apart by a series of explosions. A skeleton crew is awakened from coldsleep and they must scramble to save the frozen colonists by crash landing on the nearest possible location: a polar section of a Helix - a vast, spiral construct of worlds, wound about a G-type sun. While most of the colonists remain in coldsleep, the four surviving crew members of the Lovelock proceed up-spiral in search of a habitable section. They will encounter extraordinary and vast landscapes, alien races, and begin unraveling the mystery of who created the helix.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on another tier of the helix, a race resembling lemurs has been under the control of the Church for millennia. The Church is all-powerful and makes all decisions for the people. Ehrin Telsa, owner of Telsa Dirigible Company, mans an expedition of the western plains for usable resources. Of course, the Church sends a representative with them, Elder Cannak. When they come across an alien (not human), the people on the expedition are amazed to learn that the Church already knew of the aliens and their strange technology, even though the Church swears no other race and no other world exists. Elder Cannak and the Church are hiding many secrets. While Ehrin wants to learn, Elder Cannak and the Church begin their well planned genocide of all alien races.

*** This novel begins with Joe Hendry on Earth as he is recruited by ESO. From then on, the book continues to follow (mainly) Joe for the entire story. The sections following the lemur-like race follows (mainly) Ehrin. However, the author does not do a good job of describing what Ehrin's race looks like for the readers until Joe's crew actually meets them, pretty far into the book. This caused me, as the reader, some confusion since I had already made my own mental image of the aliens and am suddenly forced into changing that image.

There was strife between two of the four surviving bridge crewmembers. When all became clear to me, I could not help but believe that the strife sections probably made for a sub-plot in the story during the author's writing, yet so much had to be cut (due to word count from the publisher?) that it ended up weak. All-in-all, this is a decent read. Not the author's best by far, but worth your time and money. ***

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Okay, I've read the negative reviews about this book. So, I wasn't expecting much. But, I really liked this book. Yes, there are some scientific flaws here and there. However, remember this is science fiction not science fact.

I just couldn't put this book down. I read on the way to vacation to Bermuda and figured I'd read the rest on the way back. But, I kept reading and reading it on vacation until I was done. The pace is fast and touching at times. The story is very imaginative and had me thinking about humanity.

So, I won't repeat what others have already stated, but read it and find out for yourself.

When I read the back cover of "Helix," I was intrigued. The idea of a helix-shaped system around a central sun, a marooned crew making their way from world to world in search of a home and the meaning behind it all: well, it had a lot of potential.

And that is the lasting impression I got from the book. It had so much potential, had the material been in the hands of a better writer. Brown could have used the journey up the helix in a metaphorical fashion to explore his themes of environmentalism and humanity; he could have created a multi-book saga and explored many different worlds; he could fleshed out his characters against the backdrop of hardship, loss, and adventure. He could have provided the reader with stunning vistas of new worlds. But he does none of these things. It seemed like the lazy way out to me, as if his editor told him, "You have ten days to write a novel, and you need to write it to the level of a teenager."

The sloppy copyediting and proofreading was distracting. I found the characters to be one-dimensional, with backstories tacked on almost as an afterthought and not doing a single thing to enrich the story. Even the ending was a big anti-climax, and the great mystery surrounding the Helix was like a cobbling-together of old stories that we've all heard before.

If you are looking for meaningless entertainment, then the book is in fact fast-paced. But do not expect a great book.

As another reviewer said, there is a lot to like in the author's style. Unfortunately, his knowledge of technology is pitiful, and this is critical in a science fiction novel. Some examples: Humanity's very first extra-solar colony ship goes 500 light years to look for a habitable planet? When the ship comes apart at near-lightspeed (for no reason ever revealed), the crew says they are a parsec from the nearest star system. Minutes later, they hit the atmosphere. At near-lightspeed. They then proceed to survive a landing with no propulsion system. And so on... I won't even attempt to go into the engineering issues of the actual helix.

The aliens in the story are so culturally humanoid, their furry or scaly skins don't matter. The interactions between the humans are stereotyped and mechanical. The crew of humans is so small and acts so improbably, it beggars the imagination. And as for the convenient "enhancements" of one crew member who learns alien languages after hearing about two sentences, why not just use magic spells?

The plot jumps from scenario to scenario, with only the most coincidentally convenient linkages. When the ending comes, it is so lame and predictable, it must have come only because the required number of pages had been reached.

Maybe Mr. Brown should stick to fantasies.

Fast paced writing is no substitute for good writing. The characters are cardboard, weak plot devices abound, and much of the worlds we see could pass for generic wallpaper. This book has no redeeming features.

Some other reviewers here are trying to put on as if they never planned their daily schedules around the show time of the latest Star Trek: TNG episode, hence silly criticisms of a fun story. To those grumps I say get over yourselves and buy Helix! This novel isn't towering science fiction literature, for Asimov's sake, it's a ripping sci fi adventure with nifty ideas, interesting characters, and groovy aliens.

This book has touching characters, human and non-human. It had vistas that could be whole novels in themselves. The sense of journey had a great deal of potential. Having parallel threads made for great perspectives. I genuinely enjoyed the ride, and if this had been written in the mid 1970's when expectation levels were different, it could have been highly regarded.
But a vista this big and ambitious really needed more filler. There was a bit too much Deux ex-machine thrown in with regard to the builders of the Helix (reminded me of the horrible disappointment at the end of Rama Revealed by Arthur C. Clarke).
I also felt that the message was quite poor in the end, regarding the inevitable decline of all species into babbling new-age religious drones. Species collective senility has been covered by David Brin and Iain Banks, but have been done in more artful ways. That part of the ending left me feeling "what is the point"
I will definitely read Eric Brown again, he deserves another shot, but I really think he short changed this books potential.

Generation ship crashes onto a far away planet inhabited by sentient, human-like rat bipeds who fly dirigables and are dominated by a church run government who executes rat-people for even thinking about questioning their authority.

At least the concept of the Helix is interesting, but it wasn't developed.

I read Eric Brown when there's nothing else interesting. Currently reading Engineman, sorta the same - bland but readable.

*Spoiler Free Review*

Saw the cover, read the blurb, and thought this would be a decent book. The idea is sound and solid, Earth Dying, Generation Ship, New World, okay, you got my $7. But the execution was just lacking. The story is way too disjointed, jumping from point A to E to F to M to P to Z. Similarly, the characters do not match the world building which does not quite match the plot which does not quite match the rising action.

Then there is the matter of the science being all kinds of wrong, implausible to the point where I cannot suspend my disbelief. And I'm not talking about space travel and the Helix, i'm fine with all that. I'm talking about the author's propensity for using the SONIC SCREWDRIVER (in the form of a character's miraculous abilities) just out of the blue. *google Sonic Screwdriver plot device*. I'm mean, talk about lazy.

And then, there are back stories tacked on as an afterthought that just have NOTHING to do with the freaking real story here. It's like, "Hey, we need some drama, drop an infodump about something bad and then hammer that square peg into the round hole of the story until it fits."

On the plus side, the writing is decent. It is more or less well written, and I even grow to like the main characters.

But the execution isn't right. All the story elements, ideas, etc. just didn't mix correctly.

Sorry, Its a miss for me.