Powersat Ben Bova

I'm pretty sure I've read a Ben Bova book before, and that I relatively enjoyed it. That's why in my latest trip to the library I picked up a couple of his books, including Powersat. The first couple that I tried were boring and they had a sense of being more of the same. I slowly abandoned them one by one until only Powersat was left.

The Novel starts off with a character piloting a spacecraft that's having some kind of technical issue and she ends up having to give in and abandon ship. She's about to press the big "fire-truck red" button when her hand gets twisted. She continues to try to reach for this button and then the whole thing blows up/crashes and comes down somewhere over Texas. Unfortunately, throughout this supposedly thrilling chapter I wasn't even mildly interested - I didn't know who the character, or the people communicating with her, were. Things got worse in the next chapter when the remnants of the plane were being compiled and it turned out that none of the other characters cared about this pilot either. In fact, I almost fell asleep in the second chapter as the head of the company that owned the spacecraft was sitting there thinking, and talking, about his financial woes and his dashed hopes.

As soon as I started reading it I recognized the name Yamagata (and - vaguely - his characterization from whichever Ben Bova novel it was that I read before. Except that in the other novel I recall caring about the characters from early on. Here... not at all.

In the third chapter it turned out that the spacecraft didn't malfunction. It was brought down by a bunch of terrorists from several Arab countries who wanted to ruin the space project just because it was led by an American, because they hated all Americans for the sake of hating Americans. They were so one-dimensional and horribly characterized that I immediately put the novel down. If I wanted to hear that nonsense I'd watch fox news or something.

So my attempt to read Powersat (and a couple of other Ben Bova novels) ended. I'm also starting to get sick of the genre in general and I may go back to Fantasy for a while... if I can find something good, that is. I had vaguely considered reading the Hunger Games, but then I decided to read some reviews first and realized that I wouldn't like it at all. I can see, from the synopsis/reviews that I read why teenagers would be into it...>.>

If anyone actually follows this blog and has some suggestions for me please leave a comment. Otherwise I might have to start a re-read cycle of things I have enjoyed in the past.