After the Crash

I'll preface this review by stating the author contacted me via good reads and offered me a free ebook copy of the book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Stuart Jaffe is not an author I was familiar with before he contacted me, but I would consider reading other books by him in the future.

To the actual review:

The good:

Once the book got going, I really enjoyed it. I thought the characters were well developed. You share a sense of concern with the protagonist for the motivations of the others. You are left to decide along with her who is being honest and who might be lying and why.

Jaffe also does a good job describing the planet and an ecology of this strange unexplored planet.

It is a story of survival and self exploration, with a bit of a mystery mixed in.

The not-so-good:

The book starts out at some point in the future, then flashes back. I presume it was done to draw the user in and present them with engaging questions. I just mostly found it confusing.

This technique seems to be overused in TV these days, so that might be why I'm particularly sensitive to it.

I flipped back to re-read the beginning a few times once I was further in the book to remind myself what happened to try to piece things back together. Overall this is a minor gripe on my part though.

The first part of the book moved a bit slow for my liking. Some of the detail Jaffe used to set up the main character felt a bit drawn out.

I was also a little underwhelmed by the primary ending (there are some things that occur after the “big reveal”, but it's mostly prologue). I still feel that he wrapped things up sufficiently though.