Post-Human (Post-Human Trilogy, #2) by David Simpson …

As with so many books these days, this one let me down. Particularly in that the summary implies there is some element of mystery to what happened to the rest of humanity, and instead it's immediately obvious what happened. Really: you know what they're going to find before they ever get home, and it's already pretty clear why they're not dead; connecting the dots isn't hard. The real mystery is why four super-smart people needed a fifth to explain it to them.

Which leads me to this less than her...more

Which leads me to this less than heroic cast. First we have Keats, a hero who slips into a moral abyss before the action even starts. Could they maybe have had the crisis first at least? It takes only a matter of minutes to go from "I'm a moral guy, I can't help my urges but I can be better than them" to "hot damn, nobody will ever know, let's do it". (Less than thirty, in fact, including time to do the deed.) Similarly with "Old Timer" and his micro-affair: apparently in the highly evolved future humans live forever, and they marry forever, but they can rebound from the inconceivable loss of a spouse -- guilt included -- in about a day. Then there's Thel, Keats' extra-marital love interest. Women are apparently rather violent in this future, as she and Djanet believe they have the right to beat up, knock out, or otherwise coerce anyone into doing what they want. The author gets points for having high intelligence breed contempt, but loses far more for having the super-intelligent people (a) be unable to think of a better solution and then (b) be surprised that causing mayhem doesn't make friends. Lastly, there's Rich. His differentiating feature is that he has free reign to insult anyone at anytime, but doesn't have the skin to take it in return, nor the cleverness to do it without being obvious. For most of the book, these are scared, stupid, selfish people. The other four are dependent on Keats to do the thinking for them; when he can't, they resort to the aforementioned belligerence. Yet after they go on a few forced patrols (of which we only see one, and it's spent explaining how Craig has fallen in love), and do a few repairs, they're suddenly ready to sacrifice themselves to save the world. Why? How? Where's the growth and development that would make that plausible?

Clearly, then, the characters didn't work for me. Neither did the science. I think this is one of those novels that would have been better off leaving the science as a mystery, because as soon as the author explained how the characters could fly and such, I had trouble suspending my disbelief. It's been a long time since I was a physics student, but I really don't think that would work, and the nuclear power pack pretty much cinched it for me. Even if the science were solid, though, the extreme versatility of the technology made it one heck of a sonic screwdriver: it can solve any problem. It lets them fly, it can be used as a force field, it works as a weapon, and at one point Keats configures his as a cradleboard. All of which is okay up to a point...but these characters are completely dependent on them. They are constantly shifting from one application to another, and having them reuse the same solution over and over again is not only boring, but it means it never really feels like they're in danger. You know they'll just pull another trick out of the magnetic bubble.

Despite all of the above, however, the ending was the biggest problem. Without spoiling anyone who still wants to read this book, all I can say is that the villain was trite and unoriginal, and the happy ending was too perfect, too pat, and too implausible. The ultimate deus ex machina... literally.

As an Amazon prime member, I was able to read this for free from the lending library. I'm glad I did, as it means I found the book far less frustrating -- though no less disappointing -- than if I'd had to pay for it. It also led me to waffle a bit on my rating. However, Simpson has a masters in English Literature, and teaches the subject as his profession. If anyone should know better, he should. (less)

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Post-Human (Post-Human Trilogy, #2) by David Simpson ...