The story was actually okay, if totally implausible and inconsistent. To wit:
Scientists 400 years ago determined that the sun will, for all intents and purposes, explode right about now. Plans have been undertaken to physically remove the entire planet Earth from the field of this explosion. Some people feel a better option would be to build a bajillion spaceships, stock each one with renewable and self-sustainable resources and a couple hundred thousand people, and fly away.
A science teacher early on explains that the Spaceship theory won't work - too small a biosphere cannot support life for any significant period of time. This is why generations of scientists and government have decided to... build gargantuan plasma engines that bring the surface temperature of the earth up to 140-160+ degrees Fahrenheit 24/7 as they provide thrust for the Earth to embark on an ever-widening elliptical artificial orbit which causes global tsunamis 300+ feet in height, hurricanes/tornadoes/typhoons which result in "every tree" on the face of the planet being uprooted, earthquakes, core/crust instability causing magma flows that destroy the underground settlements? Settlements which, by the way, are underground in the first place because above ground the temperatures - even without the plasma engines - veer from "burn everything to a blackened, ashy crisp" at perihelion to "oceans have frozen over/solid" at aphelion (or possibly vice versa; I never was any good at astronomical terminology)? Oh, and did I mention that over the course of breaking free from the Sun's orbit, the plasma engines consumed, as fuel for their own functioning, fully half of all the mountains in Asia? There are a LOT of mountains in Asia. Big ones, too.
Way to save the planet, guys. High five. I'm sure that after you've settled into your new solar system after freezing/burning off your atmosphere during your jaunt over, it'll only be a couple of months before you've got crops in the fields, fish in the seas, birds and bees and butterflies and white picket fences for everyone.
BUT the writing is good, and the detail applied to describing all these cataclysms is captivating - including the psychological effect of, say, looking into the "sky" and seeing nothing but Jupiter's red eye staring back at you, up close and personal. If a little bit more information had been given on exactly how humanity would be saved by the complete physical destruction of the entire surface of their planet and all its biosystems except humans, I'd probably give it 4 stars. (There were quite a few grammatical issues.)
My reason for the two-star review is simply this: The description says that the book is 482 pages. Four hundred eighty-two. That's 82 more pages than Earth had years to prepare for the Sun's end. If the same person calculating pages had calculated years, the planet would have been engulfed by the helium burst before the first "Let's Save Our Planet" meeting had been called to order.
At a guess, I'd say the story (it is NOT a book) is maybe 50-60 pages. And there are times when I'm okay with paying $3-4 for a short story. (Not many, but it's happened.) However, in this case, what I wanted was hours of distracting, if perhaps not uniformly engrossing, sci-fi. A couple bucks for 482 pages worth of storytelling is worth it, even if the story is sub-par. For 45-60 minutes' worth of reading, though? No.
I've requested a refund from Amazon, and feel confident that will go smoothly. If the description of the book gets updated from the current citation (in multiple places) of 482 pages, I will likewise update my rating to 3 or 4 stars for an interesting hour or so worth of reading. (And a new appreciation for how tolerable a temperature of a mere 100 degF really is.) Until then, if you're cool with a very quick, totally implausible and plot-hole-ridden tale of "Starship Earth," carry on! But if you're expecting a full-length book, this is not it.
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Top reviews from other countries
Cliente Kindle
Criativa obra de ficção científica
Reviewed in Brazil on October 7, 2017
Kindle Customer
Brilliantly epic short story
Reviewed in Australia on August 13, 2016
