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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The characters in the story were sure more impressed than me, January 18, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Life Form (Paperback)
The book begins like a movie, you know, panning over the scene and meeting all the characters one by one in excrutiating detail. You could tell by how charismatic they were which ones were going to die first. And then they landed on the planet and a few characters slowly develop a "misgiving" to foreshadow the later action. They meet cute child-like aliens, and Foster can't help but introduce human-and-alien sex at this point, of course. (He's like that. I guess it sells.) So we have a few people die under mysterious circumstances, and people falling in love and having sex with the cute aliens, and a mysterious human already on the planet who adds to the body count -- and everyone is mystified, horrified, and made nearly insane by the final discovery of mystery of the planet and its inhabitants. And I'm waiting to feel the same sense of "OH MY GOD" as I turn the pages. I'm waiting to be wrapped up in the fitful panic of the characters I just spent the first half of the book being introduced to. But, I tell you, it never happens. The characters seem to feel all sorts of emotions, but the writing never invoked it in me. I mean, hearing the narrator tell me how frightened and freaked out the characters were is NOT the same thing as the narrator spending time to describe something to me that might freak ME out. I was an outsider. It seemed like the characters were poorly motivated to feel what they felt, since the author never seemed to stop long enough to try to make *me* feel anything. I think this book ends up being nothing more than a shallow, superficial action-adventure story gilded with just the faintest glint of science fiction and psychological drama. If that sort of thing appeals to you, then "Life Form" will too.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
this was a great book, July 23, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Life Form (Paperback)
I personally loved this book and read it straight through but a word of warning to all alan dean foster fans like all of alan dean fosters books this book is very good but alan dean foster has I guess two ways of writing because like all the reviews on amazon.com either his books are 5star or 1star it is your choice to decide but in the end but I loved this book and I definitely want a sequal
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An vision of planetary exploration, April 22, 2000
This review is from: Life Form (Paperback)
Lifeform was an enjoyable book about planetary exploration. I captures a great deal of the unbridled spirit of discovery of the unknown that lies deep in the heart of all adventurers. My only disappointment with this novel was that it seemed at many times to take the reader almost 80% there in the excitement, but would fail to cross that line that would make it a gripping page turner. I loved the entire concept of the world, and any science fiction fan will enjoy the creativity in this area. This book could have been an explosive breakthrough in the SF, but was a little short on the plot. It seemed that Foster had this great idea for this world, but when he got all the characters there and the world evolved, he ran out of ideas of what was going to happen to really make this an epic. I did enjoy this book tremendously, however, as it does give you a journey to a far away place.
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