Customer Reviews

Hostile Takeover

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

 

 

This is a book that has no real justification for its existence.

Problem 1: CC, our heroine. She's a paranoid obsessive-compulsive social-climbing insecure workaholic anal-retentive corporate drone. She's not very likable, nor very interesting. I grant that, within the tale's backstory, it doesn't seem unreasonable that she's the way she is--but it doesn't make her any more attractive as a protagonist. (She gets a little better in the course of the book, but not much, and not very convincingly.)

Problem 2: the plot. CC spends the bulk of the book doing financial analysis. Shwartz doesn't describe what she's doing except in broad terms. That may seem understandable, given that most people don't find forensic accounting that interesting--but it means that the reader has no way of following the "action". To make an intrigue story work, the reader has to be able to, as it were, play along--to experience the "aha!" moments along with the character. In this case, we're left on the outside, mere spectators to CC's (extremely repetitive) all-nighter computer ssessions, each of which boils down to the following paragraph:

"CC did some stuff."

Oh, and there are several attempts to kill CC, about which she does ... nothing.

Problem 3: the resolution. Any experienced SF reader will figure out what's going on around 1/5th of the way into the book. But when we finally get to the big climax, CC promptly *SITS AROUND WITH HER THUMB IN HER EAR* while a secondary character walks on and makes stuff happen. And then ... deus ex machina! POOF! Powerful benevolent forces show up--not through the doing of any plot developments shown in the book--and there's a magic happy ending

_Hostile Takeover_ could have survived an unsympathetic main character if it had had an engrossing plot. It could have survived a lackluster plot if it had had a good protagonist. Without either, and with a limp anticlimax at the end to boot, the book just sits there.

_Hostile Takeover_ isn't actually badly written, incoherent, repellent, shrill, or insulting to the reader's intellect. However, it's an uninvolving story about an unattractive person with an unexciting resolution. In other words, it's a mess. I'm frankly surprised the book's editor didn't red-flag it for a thorough going-over before it was released.

Ms. Shwartz' "Hostile Takeover" suffers from many of the flaws pointed out in the other reviews. The most astute of the reviews (by Jonathan A. Turner) points out what makes it an unsatisfying read (that most of the story is not explicit where it should be); I can add to this that where Shwartz does hint at the analyses main character CC Williams does there are several hints that Shwartz does not really understand either how analysts function vis-a-vis everyday activities or what tools they use to do their work.

I can add that (as M.D. Womack pointed out), the writing is difficult to follow at times, with flashbacks longer than the action at present inserted into the middle of several episodes. Shwartz also continually needlessly reminds readers of events they had read just a score of pages before and relies overmuch on a particular form of inappropriate metaphor. My guess as I scrambled through the pages that "Hostile Takeover" was edited down in a rush from a much longer manuscript.

The only thing I found interesting about the book was that it is not actually science fiction at all: it's a romance-mystery that happens to be set in the kind of milieu usually associated with science fiction: imagine a Harlequin romance written in noir style set on one of the soundstages used for Star Trek, and you've pretty much got the flavor of the novel.

That being the only interesting thing about the novel, I couldn't imagine recommending this to anyone except an academic interested in genre conventions.

Susan Shwartz's Hostile Takeover was an engrossing read. CC Williams was a different kind of character, and it was refreshing to read a space adventure with such a unique twist. In this novel, fledgling corporate auditor CC Williams is assigned to audit the business activities on the asteroid Vesta. The details about what it would really be liked to travel in space, and live on a micro-gravity asteroid showed a lot of research and thought, and gave this book a really fresh perspective. The plot was full of intrigue, and kept me guessing (which is hard!) and I applaud Ms. Shwartz for writing a hard s.f. novel with plenty of heart and excellent characterizations.

I recommend this book to all who like a rousing adventure in space that has a really unique point of view of the future of space travel.

-A.C. Crispin
[...]

I bought this book because it was ranked "alongside the likes of Asimov and Heinlein." I should have known better, I know. Not only do I concur with other reviewers about the weakness of plot and lack of any real action, but it is written very poorly. After the third confusing passage where we start in the present, progress to a past/future flashback, and then end up back in the future present...I gave up. The use of this writing tool in the book makes it completely confusing and unreadable. I hated it, put it down for the day, cussing the entire time, and later burned in my fireplace for kindling. It was useful for something, though a bit pricey compared to other forms of kindling.

I *LIKE* this book!

I like reading books about people making or handling huge sums of money. (Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich comes to mind.) I like books in which the protagonist wins against bad odds. Shwartz has created an interesting world in which one must move deftly through social/business situations in which missing the slightest nuance of speech, look, or body language can screw up one's permanent record, and it doesn't take much to lose big and have one's body sold for parts. The extrapolation of today's corporate culture saddled with today's liberal, politically-correct speech censorship carried to its extreme make an interesting venue in which to live and work. I did find this similar to Heinlein with a touch of EE Doc Smith's space opera. Schwartz made one short reference to CC's thought patterns which reminded me of both Horatio Hornblower pacing the ship's deck for hours and Van Gulik's Judge Dee angrily pacing the room while forming a plan of action: "... she'd always tried to imagine tricky situations and how she'd deal with them."

I hope Schwartz brings CC back to show what the aliens have been teaching her since she and Marc went off with them.

I don't get why others would dislike the protagonist. She's great. The universe is interesting and I am looking forward to more stories from it.

In a future where corporations effectively rule mankind CC Williams, a midlevel auditor, is sent out to the asteroid belt to check up on some suspected hanky-panky with the books. In a corporate world where even the damning with faint praise on a evaluation can result in not only unemployment but death CC has to keep her bosses as well as the clients happy all while someone is trying to kill her.

For the most part an average bit of fluff but at least the universe Ms. Shwartz creates is interesting and the story line fun. Unfortunately it is also pretty obvious from the first couple of pages what the outcome for at least part of the storyline will be.

The characters are fairly well developed and enjoyable to follow but the buzz-speak of the corporate cultural is overdone and distracting.

All in all a fair result but I'm going to remain NEUTRAL on this one. It just didn't do much for me.