The Effort

By. Claire Holroyde

P. 356

Format: Print

Rating: ***1/2

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The Effort is an apocalyptic book that will make you think of the movie Armageddon, at least at first. It is a more classic science fiction feel to it. It was a relatively quick read, and overall I enjoyed it.

However, there are a few things about the book that really bugged me. I just don’t think it is realistic. I do not mean from a science stand point, but from a human standpoint. The book is multi-perspective. There are core characters, but we also see from the perspective of side or even random characters. It sees humanity at it’s worst and makes them even worse. It was too extreme and too fast for the situation. I kept reaching through the book wanting to shake characters and ask them if they had never heard of the concept of FARMING. Hello!

Also, a lot of character threads were left hanging. I am sure this was intentional to help build up the situation, but given that the situation was already overdone I did not enjoy this. Most our main characters were abandoned also. Maybe this was also intentional, but it did not feel that way. It seemed more like a way of keeping the page count down.

If you are a plot based reader then you will probably love this book. If you are a character based reader then probably not as much. It was still refreshing to read an old theme that I hadn’t seen a lot of lately, even if I did not mesh with the character development.