1 out of 4 stars
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Gilligan's Toy by Janet Kaye Smith is a sci-fi, fantasy, adventure short story. The book centers on the plant Topal, a planet that once thrived with Topalites that went extinct during a war with Wogenites.
On the planet Topal, houses a colonization of humans whose primary mission is to learn about the planet and what happened to the former species, Topalites. During their stay, the humans are introduced to a wolf-like humanoid species known as Wogenites. Little to their knowledge, the Wogens have a past with the Topalites. The book focuses on Danet, a Wogen pilot and Hunter, a human, and their separate problems.
Danet's issues lie with a restless crew and a commander that refuses to bring them home. Hunter's lie with a realistic RPG that one of the crew found. Most of the colonization is obsessed with this game. When some human goes missing, it is up to Hunter to find out why. His instincts convince him that the game everyone seems completely addicted to is the reason behind his disappearance.
The book was short and contained a very interesting concept. A virtual reality game that contains information on the Topalites and the Wogenites that have an interest of the planet, but has not colonized it themselves. As well as, world building concepts. The book was fast and kept the story moving and growing at the same time.
No matter how much I enjoyed the concept of the book, I had entirely too many issues with the way it was written. From the first page alone, the names of people and things threw me. They were not relatable, so it took a long time to connect to the characters. The sentences felt entirely too full, almost every sentence seemed like it was a run on. I enjoy a good description, but there was so much on certain objects, such as the space ship, that there was little left to the imagination. It was difficult to imagine a space ship described this way. I felt that I was unable to pictures some of the things described in the book, which pulled greatly from the story. Overall, the first page was not an attention grabber, in fact, it was very confusing with all the information and description.
In the beginning when describing a character the author is not clear on whether this is what the species looks like or just the one character. Later, this is confusing when the author describes what a character's body is doing. Such as, "Danet's ears bent back slightly…." However, the author does an amazing job describing the Wogen's appearance through the eyes of Hunter later in the book.
Another issue I had with the book, were the transitions. I was not able to follow which character was speaking or which character was the focus until later in the paragraph. This had me rereading the section to get a better understanding of what was going on. There were also time jumps that were not clear. Without giving too much away, the characters would be doing one thing and within a paragraph we would be with someone else, doing something else, at a different and unclear time. An example, at one point the Wogens were walking out of their ship, but within the conversation with the ambassador, they were suddenly in a building. There was no transition. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on.
There was very little written about the past of the humans, Topalites, or Wogenites. This led to a lot of confusion, some of which was explained near the end of the book. In the meantime, this left the reader confused making it harder to follow the story line.
Overall, the writing seems inconsistent. At times, the author's writing is clear, full, and easy to follow. Other times, the author's writing is over descriptive and confusing. The author tried to do a lot of showing in the writing, when telling would have been easier and more enjoyable for the reader. Having little to no transitions throughout the book made the story line confusing. The over description was too much and left little to the imagination when trying to relate to the characters or the world. The book did end with the possible creation of a second book. However, due to the poor writing of this one, I would not pick it up to read. The basis of the book was an interesting concept, I believe with better editing and more expansion on the story I would have very much enjoyed the book and would have looked forward to reading a second one. Based on all this information, I give the book a 1 out of 4 stars. I had to give one start for the concept of the book as well as the world building.
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Gilligan's Toy
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