Introduction
I recently finished another boring
book that had strange pacing problems, it was “
Genesis” by Ken Lozito and
narrated by Scott Aeillo.
It is book one
in the “First Colony” series.
I got it
on sale from Audible as I am a frequent reader of science fiction.
It sucked...
The Plot
After a
botched military black operation against the international criminal
organization known as “The Syndicate” results in the death of millions, Colonel
Conner is kidnapped by his commanding officer and put onto the first ever
interstellar colony ship. Conner will be
made the fall guy for the botched op but will be allowed to live in exile on
some distant alien world.
After arriving
Conner quickly ingratiates himself with the comically inept colonists by
telling them incredibly basic tactics and saving people from their own stupidity. He becomes head of his own search and rescue
team and after a short period of time spent in the role manages to save people
from a horde of slavering monsters.
Then,
rather than offer any sort of denouement, the last 30 minutes of the story is a
massive sequel hook to a book I will never read.
 |
| The voice actor did his best, with the material he was given. |
First: Some Good Stuff
This book
has a lot of good set up. A main
character with a dark past fighting terrorists and criminals; hundreds of
thousands of colonists in suspended animation means that the author will never
run out of new and interesting characters that need no explanation for why they
haven’t been around; and there are mysteries on the planet, with alien ruins
and monsters that promise adventure in a pulp science fiction sense.
The action
scenes are pretty good. I have a good
understanding of the geography of each fight, the capabilities of the monsters
and equipment, and the limitations of the heroes due to injury and other limiting
factors. It is a shame the action scenes
are boring because they are in service to my first complaint.
Now the Bad Stuff: Lame Characters
The
dialogue is boring,
flat, and functional.
Little humor or humanizing aspects exist.
When variations occur, it is to illustrate a
character as a whiney stupid dipshit.
No
one uses interesting turns of phrase, nobody gives any small stories to explain
their own world view, nobody except Conner seems to have any backstory of note.
Call me crazy, but the command staff of the
first interstellar colony ship from Earth would have some pretty elite and
interesting people, not just a gaggle of dweebs.
I guess when
I said, “…never run out of new interesting characters…” when talking about the
good stuff, I was giving credit to the concept/set-up, but I can’t point to
anything in the execution. Aside from
the two roles of, “Complain about Conner” and “Agree with Conner” there really
isn’t much going on that characters get up to.
I guess, “Resent Conner for being right” is a third option.
There is Sean, the son of the
governor who wants to join search and rescue to reach his full potential and
get away from his parent’s smothering him, and he shares a name with Conner’s
son who he left behind on Earth.
Sooooooooo,
Sean had
SO MUCH POTENTIAL as a story element, but fails for the same reason
everyone fails.
He is just so flat.
 |
But hey, there is a scene in which Conner fights alien monsters in power armor. That is kind of cool.
I mean, nobody dies and there is no tension at all in the scene. So, it is kind of toothless and boring. |
Bigger Complaint: Boring Protagonist
Beyond the
background characters being boring the real diamond hard issue at the core of
the story is Conner himself. HE IS
BORING TO SUCH AN EPIC LEVEL. He is not
a character so much as he is a collection of skills. He makes a decision, he does a thing, and
then the situation resolves itself.
There is never a point where Conner
has a character defect (fear, lack of confidence, indecision, or even something
more complex like greed or over confidence).
There is no point where he makes a mistake or lapse in judgement which results
in something bad happening. Conner is
always right, Conner always has the tools to resolve the situation (with one
exception where a scientist has to do science at a science thing while Conner
protects them), and Conner is only opposed by the petty jealousy and bullshit
of others, never his own.
 |
Honestly, the Doom Marine has loads of personality, especially by the standards of early video game characters.
I feel bad comparing this guy to Conner. |
Conner’s story begins with him
BEING FRAMED FOR THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS and you would figure such a thing would
cause some mistrust with the gaggle of strangers he now has to work with… NOPE!
The strangers immediately accept that he
was framed.
Conner doesn’t even feel all that
bad about all the people dying, at no point does that disaster cause him to
second guess himself, feel guilty about maybe having made a bad call, and at no
point do the circumstances of the disaster reflect on the story. The bad guys did this, he just happened to be
there to catch all the shit. Conner learns
nothing from the experience… Which makes me wonder, as a reader, why the author
bothered with the deaths of millions as a starting point?
Conner could have just been on the
Colony ship to work in law enforcement on the new planet. Same background in the military but wanting
to start a new life on the frontier. You
could even leave his estranged family back on Earth, have him move on because
he could not face them after all the stuff he did in the military. It changes NOTHING about the rest of the
story.
BETTER YET, have the incident mean
something.
Conner is fighting the
Syndicate and learns that thousands of Syndicate operatives are implanted on
the colony ship, they want to run their own planet by taking control of the
colony.
The idea of an elite team having
to ferret out a group that wants to build their own new criminal empire in the
stars, that sounds epic.
You could even
point out that such an idea goes back thru history, the
Medici family than ran
Florence (and by extension Italy via their bank empire and control of the
Vatican) their symbol was the visible planets in the sky, and another sphere
representing their family.
That is
fucking awesome, and a perfect symbol for what Conner could be fighting
against.
BETTER EVEN STILL, have Conner be
responsible for the deaths of millions.
Have that fact kept secret and he is haunted not only by causing those
deaths, but the very real danger that someone might somehow discover who he is,
and that discovery destroy their trust in him… OR BRAND HIM AS A CRIMINAL AND
KILL HIM. There is a scene, Sean finds
out Conner killed a huge number of people out of negligence or stupidity and rejects
him, “My surrogate son has seen thru the veneer of heroism I use to shield the
world from the monster within me. DRAMA!”
There is so much potential, and it
is flushed away.
Conner becomes the
boring competent protagonist, what a character
like Captain America becomes in the hands of a bad writer.
It is not
impossible to make this type of protagonist work, but you have to challenge his
Character not his Abilities.
To continue the comparison, Captain
America is interesting when someone shows him an easier way to accomplish his
goals, but that way compromises Cap’s ethics, and then Cap has to deal with the
harm and loss of life that comes with taking the hard road to hold to his principles. Conner should have had to confront something
that challenged his morals, not something that tested his ability to use power
armor or a laser rifle.
Instead, Conner just wins, and the
people who disagree with him are seen as dipshits. Maybe I would be more tolerant of that if (at
the very least) Conner’s advice was not so basic and simple as to be insulting
to my intelligence. His discussion of
check-in procedures and use of surveillance technology is so simple that the
fact that the colonists weren’t using those tactics makes them come off as
buffoonish.
Minor Complaint: Names
Conner’s
team was called “Ghosts”. The bad guys
are “The Syndicate”. The planet is “New
Earth”. Everything is so generically
named it feels like I am playing “Destiny”.
 |
Bitch if you want, fans of Destiny. The names for things in this blow.
The game also blows. |
*Sigh and Groan*
I feel
almost bad writing this out, as the author seems like an okay guy. I feel like the bones of this book work as a
basic adventure story with a lot of sequel hooks thrown in… But good lord would
I love to just go in and re-write this thing with punchier dialogue, more
personal scenes, and more character conflict that feels earned rather than petty
bickering. Things that play to my writing
strengths and my taste in stories.
“Genesis”
is weak. There are just too many other
books with similar subject matter that are loads better. “Old Man’s War” absolutely pummels this story
into the dirt, same with “We are Legion (We are Bob)” or even “Steel World”
which is not high art, but at the very least has some tension and humor.
I guess I
finished “Genesis”, joining it to a growing number of books with the
distinction of, “Bad books I made it thru”.
I cannot recommend this, it was like trying to eat an unseasoned and
under cooked potato.
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