Review by EMMANUEL365 -- Chip’s World: Complex #31...
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EMMANUEL365
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- Latest Review: Chip’s World: Complex #31 and The Caretaker by Thomas Hill
Review by EMMANUEL365 -- Chip’s World: Complex #31...
[Following is a volunteer review of "Chip’s World: Complex #31 and The Caretaker" by Thomas Hill.]
2 out of 4 stars
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Set in post-apocalyptic earth, the novel centers around a young man, Dean Haggerty born to Mr. and Mrs. Haggerty into a world now clearly different from ours, where civilisation as we know it today has given way to modernisation and robots now controlled a large part of earth’s day-to-day and even decision-making processes.
Replete with tech toys, ‘credecoins, futuristic gadgets, and lots of swashbuckling encounters between humans and technological 'creatures', this captivating story will no doubt sufficiently entertain the very conversant and the newcomer to sci-fi novels at any time of the day.
From the first few pages, however, the reader is sadly faced with bland recountings of uninteresting stories, one-off occurrences, names of unnecessary characters and so on. A baby born in an underground shell away from shelling above ground and inserted with a rare chip gets too close to making no sense at all, especially as one goes deeper and deeper into the story. One actually would not stop wondering why Dean’s encounter with the inactive walkerbot from which he obtained his famous switch knife that later saved his life in many ways; or the raid at the computer center by irate sprinters; or other valid and solid stories of convincing events, failed to make it to the first chapter of the novel.
The writer succeeded in making the first few chapters appear vehemently childish. Of what particular use was the mentioning of names that played very insignificant roles or even no roles at all?
To say the least, the first few chapters are set in the most amateurish of styles. And what with loads of unnecessary repetitions, needless emphases, untold number of grammatical blunders, misplacement of pronouns, continuous repetition of pronouns where names should have been used and so on.
Briefly consider this excerpt:
“Dean timidly entered the pod, and he laid down inside it on his back. Then, he folded his arms over his chest and he gripped two handle bars that came down from the sliding door. Then, he put he his feet on two pedals…”
Too many pronouns. Not my best idea of a well-set piece of work.
The chapter on tribal fighters and supernormal critters seemed to be an afterthought. The scenes contained in it are not only risible but also completely needless.
For example, consider the setting of the novel: year 2431.
The very existence of a non-robotised community of fighters existing amid the highly globalised, futuristic and technologically advanced world rubbishes the very setting of the earth as a fully robotized community in itself, which the storyline actually portrays; further constricting the theoretical setting from the whole of natural earth to maybe a continent or worse still, an isolated state like say, the USA.
Methinks the title should have been all right without ‘Chip’s world’ inserted. ‘Complex #31 And The Caretaker’ should have been a more sufficient and all-encompassing title and would have made a better heading since it was in complex #31 that most of the defining scenes and actions of the novel took place.
Mr. Hill did an amazing work with the scenes in The Complex. As I said before, the contending issue is not actually in the novel itself as a whole, aside the problem of grammatical wrongness or correctness; but in the opening chapters of the novel especially.
The descriptions of the ‘personality’ and abilities of Cindy, the Artificial Intelligence control robot in the complex was a great job which could indirectly compensate for Mr. Hill’s lackluster approach to grammatical correctness and knack for needless details.
Many things that begged for explanations were not at all explained.
For example, throughout the novel, one would not stop asking what a pod actually was. Home pod, jet pod, kill pod and other pod types kept recurring throughout the novel. Why then did Mr. Hill not deem it fit to explain what a pod actually looked like, so that the reader would have found it easy to connect the dots whenever the prefix changed?
We all know that novelists have poetic license to create characters and situations in ways they deem fit. However, where I wish to present a divergent opinion is in a few occurrences that do not appear realistic at all. For example in chapters 8 and 9, we are confronted with Dean’s encounter with an indifferent pod conductor while he made his way to Complex #31. One moment we see him travelling ‘downwards’ and ‘at incredible speeds’ for a very long time down a deep tunnel that probably stretched for miles and miles. The next moment we see him marveling ‘at the bright orange sun’.
Nowhere in the two connected chapters was any explanation offered on how Dean managed to travel downwards for miles and miles and still arrive at a complex from where the sun could be visibly appreciated.
The story line is good. Most of the scenes are superbly marvelous. However, a lot of reorganization, editing and expunging needs to be done on the book. Methinks Mr. Hill simply decided to publish his manuscript, without first bothering to proofread or edit it. The book has the potentials of a blockbuster novel, given the right corrections and amendments.
I suggest Mr. Hill finds an editor to do serious work on the book.
However, if he decides to go ahead and publish the work as it is, he should be prepared to handle a loss making investment. In addition, he would be helping to influence a generation of readers and writers who would have no qualms at all in putting out half-baked literature materials to the public.
For the reasons stated above,I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars
******
Chip’s World: Complex #31 and The Caretaker
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
2 out of 4 stars
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Set in post-apocalyptic earth, the novel centers around a young man, Dean Haggerty born to Mr. and Mrs. Haggerty into a world now clearly different from ours, where civilisation as we know it today has given way to modernisation and robots now controlled a large part of earth’s day-to-day and even decision-making processes.
Replete with tech toys, ‘credecoins, futuristic gadgets, and lots of swashbuckling encounters between humans and technological 'creatures', this captivating story will no doubt sufficiently entertain the very conversant and the newcomer to sci-fi novels at any time of the day.
From the first few pages, however, the reader is sadly faced with bland recountings of uninteresting stories, one-off occurrences, names of unnecessary characters and so on. A baby born in an underground shell away from shelling above ground and inserted with a rare chip gets too close to making no sense at all, especially as one goes deeper and deeper into the story. One actually would not stop wondering why Dean’s encounter with the inactive walkerbot from which he obtained his famous switch knife that later saved his life in many ways; or the raid at the computer center by irate sprinters; or other valid and solid stories of convincing events, failed to make it to the first chapter of the novel.
The writer succeeded in making the first few chapters appear vehemently childish. Of what particular use was the mentioning of names that played very insignificant roles or even no roles at all?
To say the least, the first few chapters are set in the most amateurish of styles. And what with loads of unnecessary repetitions, needless emphases, untold number of grammatical blunders, misplacement of pronouns, continuous repetition of pronouns where names should have been used and so on.
Briefly consider this excerpt:
“Dean timidly entered the pod, and he laid down inside it on his back. Then, he folded his arms over his chest and he gripped two handle bars that came down from the sliding door. Then, he put he his feet on two pedals…”
Too many pronouns. Not my best idea of a well-set piece of work.
The chapter on tribal fighters and supernormal critters seemed to be an afterthought. The scenes contained in it are not only risible but also completely needless.
For example, consider the setting of the novel: year 2431.
The very existence of a non-robotised community of fighters existing amid the highly globalised, futuristic and technologically advanced world rubbishes the very setting of the earth as a fully robotized community in itself, which the storyline actually portrays; further constricting the theoretical setting from the whole of natural earth to maybe a continent or worse still, an isolated state like say, the USA.
Methinks the title should have been all right without ‘Chip’s world’ inserted. ‘Complex #31 And The Caretaker’ should have been a more sufficient and all-encompassing title and would have made a better heading since it was in complex #31 that most of the defining scenes and actions of the novel took place.
Mr. Hill did an amazing work with the scenes in The Complex. As I said before, the contending issue is not actually in the novel itself as a whole, aside the problem of grammatical wrongness or correctness; but in the opening chapters of the novel especially.
The descriptions of the ‘personality’ and abilities of Cindy, the Artificial Intelligence control robot in the complex was a great job which could indirectly compensate for Mr. Hill’s lackluster approach to grammatical correctness and knack for needless details.
Many things that begged for explanations were not at all explained.
For example, throughout the novel, one would not stop asking what a pod actually was. Home pod, jet pod, kill pod and other pod types kept recurring throughout the novel. Why then did Mr. Hill not deem it fit to explain what a pod actually looked like, so that the reader would have found it easy to connect the dots whenever the prefix changed?
We all know that novelists have poetic license to create characters and situations in ways they deem fit. However, where I wish to present a divergent opinion is in a few occurrences that do not appear realistic at all. For example in chapters 8 and 9, we are confronted with Dean’s encounter with an indifferent pod conductor while he made his way to Complex #31. One moment we see him travelling ‘downwards’ and ‘at incredible speeds’ for a very long time down a deep tunnel that probably stretched for miles and miles. The next moment we see him marveling ‘at the bright orange sun’.
Nowhere in the two connected chapters was any explanation offered on how Dean managed to travel downwards for miles and miles and still arrive at a complex from where the sun could be visibly appreciated.
The story line is good. Most of the scenes are superbly marvelous. However, a lot of reorganization, editing and expunging needs to be done on the book. Methinks Mr. Hill simply decided to publish his manuscript, without first bothering to proofread or edit it. The book has the potentials of a blockbuster novel, given the right corrections and amendments.
I suggest Mr. Hill finds an editor to do serious work on the book.
However, if he decides to go ahead and publish the work as it is, he should be prepared to handle a loss making investment. In addition, he would be helping to influence a generation of readers and writers who would have no qualms at all in putting out half-baked literature materials to the public.
For the reasons stated above,I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars
******
Chip’s World: Complex #31 and The Caretaker
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: Chip’s World: Complex #31 and The Caretaker by Thomas Hill
