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Faith
Moby Dick meets Duel in John Love''s debut novel of Space Opera and Military Science Fiction! Faith is the name humanity has given to the unknown, seemingly invincible alien ship that has begun to harass the newly emergent Commonwealth. 300 years earlier, the same ship destroyed the Sakhran Empire, allowing the Commonwealth to expand its sphere of influence. But now Faith has returned! The ship is as devastating as before, and its attacks leave some Commonwealth solar systems in chaos. Eventually it reaches Sakhra, now an important Commonwealth possession, and it seems like history is about to repeat itself. But this time, something is waiting: an Outsider, one of the Commonwealth''s ultimate warships. Slender silver ships, full of functionality and crewed by people of unusual abilities, often sociopaths or psychopaths, Outsiders were conceived in back alleys, built and launched in secret, and commissioned without ceremony. One system away from earth, the Outsider ship Charles Manson makes a stand. Commander Foord waits with his crew of miscreants and sociopath, hoping to accomplish what no other human has been able to do - to destroy Faith!
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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550 people want to read
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August 26, 2014
Who are you? And who are we? Is there really a concept of "we" or are we all only a finite number of Is, existing in our own universe. Maybe we orbit each other once in a while, living the illusion of becoming part of something more.
And sometimes we dance, we dance with someone else in a way that almost convinces us of this illusion. I do something and there is a reaction to my doing, it's immediate, it seems meaningful and it almost leads to immersion, to merge with that other object, that other body. Is it sexual, is it sensual or ist it more or less or both or none and something different all together?
In John Love's Faith all of these questions are asked. The dance partners are two ships. One is the mysterious Faith, a shrouded ship that destroyed the Sakhran Empire in the past and now returns to our galaxy as the Commonwealth, a union of 29 solar systems lead by the humans, sets out to become the dominat force in the region.
But Faith seems to be invincible, so the Commonwealth sends one of her 9 most dreaded weapons, an Outsider class star ship. A single ship outside of the command structure crewed by societies' outsiders. Men and women who can't exist or adapt to society, but are to valuable, due to their unique talents to be wasted by being killed or imprisoned.
Here, there is no team in I. Each of them functions better left alone. The sum of them working together would always be lesser than its individual parts.
The novel can be seperated in two larger parts. The first third gives us context about the Commonwealth, the world, the mythology around Faith and introduces some of the characters, most prominently Captain Foord, the commander of the outsider class ship Charles Manson, who is tasked with the herculean obstacle of fighting Faith, when she arrives in the system of Horus.
The second part of the novel is one large battle between the two ships. It starts with elegant dancing, feints and manouvers and builds up to the bloody mess of a Heavy Weght Champion Box Fight. But the whole fight, each of its numerous stages and the characters are all metaphors for the questions I asked in the beginning.
So, if you just look for an action adventure in space and ignore all the underlying philosophy, Faith might be a 3 star read with a really bumpy start.
But if you are into philosophy, into questions of self-awareness and existence, then Faith is a 5 star book. It's thought-provoking and everything you're looking for in a challenging read.
To give you an idea of what to expect, I'd say: If Rene Descartes had helped Erin Morgenstern to co-write a vulgar action-adventure version of "The Night Circus" in space, Faith would have been the result.
I swear to you, if you read the book, this sentence will make perfect sense!
And sometimes we dance, we dance with someone else in a way that almost convinces us of this illusion. I do something and there is a reaction to my doing, it's immediate, it seems meaningful and it almost leads to immersion, to merge with that other object, that other body. Is it sexual, is it sensual or ist it more or less or both or none and something different all together?
In John Love's Faith all of these questions are asked. The dance partners are two ships. One is the mysterious Faith, a shrouded ship that destroyed the Sakhran Empire in the past and now returns to our galaxy as the Commonwealth, a union of 29 solar systems lead by the humans, sets out to become the dominat force in the region.
But Faith seems to be invincible, so the Commonwealth sends one of her 9 most dreaded weapons, an Outsider class star ship. A single ship outside of the command structure crewed by societies' outsiders. Men and women who can't exist or adapt to society, but are to valuable, due to their unique talents to be wasted by being killed or imprisoned.
Here, there is no team in I. Each of them functions better left alone. The sum of them working together would always be lesser than its individual parts.
The novel can be seperated in two larger parts. The first third gives us context about the Commonwealth, the world, the mythology around Faith and introduces some of the characters, most prominently Captain Foord, the commander of the outsider class ship Charles Manson, who is tasked with the herculean obstacle of fighting Faith, when she arrives in the system of Horus.
The second part of the novel is one large battle between the two ships. It starts with elegant dancing, feints and manouvers and builds up to the bloody mess of a Heavy Weght Champion Box Fight. But the whole fight, each of its numerous stages and the characters are all metaphors for the questions I asked in the beginning.
So, if you just look for an action adventure in space and ignore all the underlying philosophy, Faith might be a 3 star read with a really bumpy start.
But if you are into philosophy, into questions of self-awareness and existence, then Faith is a 5 star book. It's thought-provoking and everything you're looking for in a challenging read.
To give you an idea of what to expect, I'd say: If Rene Descartes had helped Erin Morgenstern to co-write a vulgar action-adventure version of "The Night Circus" in space, Faith would have been the result.
I swear to you, if you read the book, this sentence will make perfect sense!
May 31, 2019
Фенове на фантастиката,
Имайте „Вяра�. Наистина. Книгата надмина очакванията ми в няколко аспекта. На първо място е жанрът � страхотно попадение, което умело слива класическата sci-fi с military sci-fi. На следващо � сражение между два кораба, което трае над 330 стр. /около 75% от общия обем на книгата/, изпълнено с интригуващи обрати. Това, с което „Вяра� наистина блести обаче е философския елемент, защото книгата не е просто праволинейна космическа опера. Авторът умело е маскирал много от екзистенциалните въпроси за развитието на човечеството, висшите сили, съдбата и вселената, които достигат кулминация в последната глава и оставят читателя в размишления и след като е прочел книгата.
Относно слабите страни... книгата, разбира се, притежава своите дребни кусури, но те не са съществени и не си струва да се изтъкват.
Това, което откровено разваля удоволствието от четенето, обаче, е преводът и коректурата. Думи като „пред вид� ще виждате разчленени от лазерите на Вяра от началото до самия край на изданието на български. Още по-абсурден беше преводът, в смисъл че „ед� кой си герой ще го търсят разлепяйки ФЛАЙЕРИ в пустинята�. Може би преводачът трябваше да съобрази, че „flyer� от английски е в смисъл на „летящ� машина�, с която да търсят героя, а не чрез хвърчащи листчета в пустинята. За съжаление ситуацията с преводите в жанровата литература и особено фантастиката са с чувствително ниско качество, което е безкрайно разочароващо. Дори не искам да коментирам начина, по който се превеждат идиомите от английски език.
В заключение „Вяра� ще ви отведе на едно страхотно, интелигентно поднесено приключение, с едни от най-поетичните описания на космически кораб, на които съм попадал, цитирам: �(корабът) изглеждаше непоклатим и изразителен като изписано върху лист хартия съществително, а разпръснатите наоколо хора и машини бяха само предлози.�
Просто страхотно.
Имайте „Вяра�. Наистина. Книгата надмина очакванията ми в няколко аспекта. На първо място е жанрът � страхотно попадение, което умело слива класическата sci-fi с military sci-fi. На следващо � сражение между два кораба, което трае над 330 стр. /около 75% от общия обем на книгата/, изпълнено с интригуващи обрати. Това, с което „Вяра� наистина блести обаче е философския елемент, защото книгата не е просто праволинейна космическа опера. Авторът умело е маскирал много от екзистенциалните въпроси за развитието на човечеството, висшите сили, съдбата и вселената, които достигат кулминация в последната глава и оставят читателя в размишления и след като е прочел книгата.
Относно слабите страни... книгата, разбира се, притежава своите дребни кусури, но те не са съществени и не си струва да се изтъкват.
Това, което откровено разваля удоволствието от четенето, обаче, е преводът и коректурата. Думи като „пред вид� ще виждате разчленени от лазерите на Вяра от началото до самия край на изданието на български. Още по-абсурден беше преводът, в смисъл че „ед� кой си герой ще го търсят разлепяйки ФЛАЙЕРИ в пустинята�. Може би преводачът трябваше да съобрази, че „flyer� от английски е в смисъл на „летящ� машина�, с която да търсят героя, а не чрез хвърчащи листчета в пустинята. За съжаление ситуацията с преводите в жанровата литература и особено фантастиката са с чувствително ниско качество, което е безкрайно разочароващо. Дори не искам да коментирам начина, по който се превеждат идиомите от английски език.
В заключение „Вяра� ще ви отведе на едно страхотно, интелигентно поднесено приключение, с едни от най-поетичните описания на космически кораб, на които съм попадал, цитирам: �(корабът) изглеждаше непоклатим и изразителен като изписано върху лист хартия съществително, а разпръснатите наоколо хора и машини бяха само предлози.�
Просто страхотно.
December 14, 2011
Heard of this one? Probably not. It's been pretty under the radar for book due out in less than three weeks. Seriously, go Google it. Now try the author's name. What'd you come up with? Not much, I bet. All I could find was an erudite and the corresponding Amazon.com and Nightshadebooks.com pages. The ŷ.com page doesn't even have cover art for crying out loud. All of that goes to say, more people need to be talking about Faith. Jove Love's debut is tremendous science fiction that blends literary traditions with space opera and all the various subgenres therein.
The basic premise is that 300 years ago an unidentified ship visited the Sakhran Empire and left it devastated. One Sakhran recognized the ship for what She was and wrote the Book of Srahr. When they read it, the Sakhran's turned away from each other, sending their Empire into a slow butirreversibledecline. They called Her, Faith. NowShe's back, threatening the human Commonwealth and the only thing standing in Her way is the Charles Manson.
Aegrescit medendo.A latin medical phrase that means, 'The cure is worse than the disease,' isappropriate here. The Charles Manson isn't the Enterprise. It's an Outsider, one of the Commonwealth's ultimate warships, crewed by people of unusual ability --sociopaths whose only option is to serve or die.
I mentioned the Enterprise because the main plot is somewhatreminiscentof the Star Trek model. Deep space encounters, prolonged stand-offs, failed diplomacy, synthesizing the unknown, and eventual escalation of force are alleminentlypresent in Faith. The bridge of the Charles Manson, where the vast majority of the novel takes place, has a captain, a first officer, an engineering officer, a pilot, a weapons officer, and all the other parts normally associated with a Federation Starship. Of course, Captain Picard wasn't a sexual deviant (notice I didn't say Kirk!) and Commander Riker wasn't an alien with claws for hands.
In many ways Faith is a satire of the model GeneRoddenberryexemplified in his iconic series. To boldly go where no man has gone before was the mantra of the Enterprise, a ship that was the Federation's representative to all sentient life throughout the galaxy. The Charles Manson is the ship the Federation would send in when a Romulan Warbird took a dump on the Enterprise. It's the ship theirembarrassedto have, unwelcome in every port, but tolerated for the service only they can offer. Love gets into the muck with each of his deviants, connecting them one by one to the reader, never redeemed but always compelling.
Not just a delinquent Star Trek novel, Faith is also a psychological journey akin to that of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. On the Charles Manson, Aaron Foord is Ahab, an unrelenting, obsessive, and meticulous task master who drives himself and his crew to the limits to defeat Faith. And Faith, an enigmatic and worthy opponent who Foord both loathes and adores, is the white whale. To someone whose read Melville's classic, many of the concepts that the whale represents are likewise present here. By the novels conclusion Love has melded the space opera with the literary, providing a resolution to the conflict whileinitiatinga conversation with his reader about metaphysical concepts at home in Plato's Cave.
If the novel has aweak point, and I'm not sure it does, it's that some of the early chapters -- incredibly well done in their own right -- seem unrelated to the main narrative. This phenomenon leads to somewhat rhetorical beginning that doesn't engage at the same level as the time spent on the Charles Manson bridge. There are also moments where Love delves into some of the more scientific details or finds himself caught in a logical loop. For a novel that ends with more questions than answers, the fact that these explanations. both scientific and subjective, were allowed to slow down a brisk novel seemed a strange choice.
Given that it's the first 2012 novel I've reviewed, I'm hesitant to be as glowing as I'd like to be about Faith. How can I call it one of the best debuts of the year? I don't suppose I can. I'll have to settle for this: John Love's debut is on par with Dan Simmons'sHyperion in its quest to pose questions and attempt to answer them. It may not measure up to Simmons's classic space opera in terms of pure storytelling, but I have little doubt that the currents of the novel will ebb and flow in mind for years to come. Not bad for a debut no-one's talking about.
October 31, 2013
The reviewer is obviously stuck on this review. He even used a ‘ŷ� summery to start the review, and he never does that. He has been staring at the opening to his review of ‘Faith� for so long he has started talking to himself. Worse, some kind of internal narrator has turned on. Let’s zoom in closer and see if we can listen in.
The worst part is I don’t even know if I liked the book or not. On the whole I mean. Obviously I liked, even loved some of it, but did I enjoy the whole? A book that certainly didn’t deserve to end up forgotten as it seems to have been, but perhaps not as good as I had hoped based on others glowing reviews.
Ah, a rough start, but he seems to be falling into a familiar rhythm.
For over a hundred pages I was completely hooked. One hundred percent sucked in, near perfection in the form of a space battle. Pick your metaphor, Ahab and his whale, the Bismarck and the Hood, whatever you want; a cat and mouse game with two cats. Every move countered beautifully, an unknown chess master against a genius madman. This is not a low rent space battle where ship X shoots lasers at ship Y then describe the explosion. This was a tactical masterpiece. Loved it.
But?
The beginning of the book was pointless. Completely pointless. I spent forty pages reading about the captain’s trip from a crewmembers� house back to the port in a horse drawn carriage (well, some kind of sci-fi stock animal anyway). In a sci-fi book. For no good reason. It wasn’t exciting; it showed us nothing about the captain that wasn’t shown better in other places.. I kept waiting for it to prove important later, but it didn’t. Really, outside of the amazing long term battle much of the book was self-indulgent.
Really Nathan, you’re going to call someone else’s writing self-indulgent?
Take for instance the insertion of sexual metaphors into the battle. Nothing wrong with that, but the way it was handled didn’t really work for me. Some authors may have snuck it in artfully so I might not even catch it on the first read through. Some may have tried to do so, but handled it clumsily. The author here put it in, and then seems to have felt a need to put up giant signs pointing out that he did. ‘Look at this, over here! It is a metaphor for sexual penetration! Get it!?� Here is a quote from when they penetrated a breach with a warhead.
“She never cared about it exploding, She just wanted it inside Her. And we gave it to Her. Part of us is now part of Her.� Pg288
His head sinks back down, deep thought or perhaps he is falling asleep. Must be some heavy thinking going on in that simple brain..no wait, his head is back up and the fingers are reaching for the keyboard�
To be honest the ending kind of lost me too. It all got a bit too, meta. May be more a reflection on me than the book but once the two ships hit a stalemate in which their course was locked together some typical sci-fi ‘weird shit� slowed the book down dramatically for me. Perhaps I just don’t get it, or it proves that this book just isn’t for me, but it killed the momentum that was working so well.
So what do we have? I am of two minds. A whole lot of potential and certainly a book that should be read by a lot more people who like the genre. Notes should be taken by future writers on how to do a space battle right. But this crazy short book could be even tighter without some of the frivolous stuff taken out.
We wait with bated breath young man, what is your final verdict going to be? Does the book rise above your issues? Is it sunk completely? What are you going to do?
Screw it, I’ll just give it three stars and go get a beer.
Bravo! Beer is always the right choice when the going gets tough. Well done old boy, well done.
3 Stars
April 30, 2013
I bought Faith because it had an awesome cover, a pretentious title, and a sweet premise on the back of the book. A super powerful ship visited a civilization 100 years ago and then left, and ever since then that civilization has gone into decline. Now it's returned, and the human civilization is determined to fight it off via epic space battle with their own super awesome ship stuffed with felonious geniuses (not to be confused with felinious geniuses; that would be altogether a different book).
It's an exciting book, especially as the build-up for the eventual fight between the two ships does such a good job of playing up the mysterious and powerful nature of the enemy ship (called Faith). The actual engagement takes up the majority of the book and goes through several stages, as do the characters on the ship. There's intense back-and-forth between the two ships, each part more interesting and stranger than the first, and as the cleverness and competency of the protagonists meets up against the impossibility of the task, you find yourself rooting quite hard for the good guys.
But Faith is quite ambitious in that it's not just a story of two superships fighting an epic battle. The story heaps themes upon itself at every opportunity, whether it's the Other, irony, faith (duh), solitude, or so on. The ship Faith is strange and ponderous and ideal for hosting symbolism, and Love gets all the mileage he can out of it, and does so well. When the antagonist of an entire novel is a ship, it's difficult to give it the weight of character that Love does so here with such obvious enjoyment. The synopsis calls Faith "the bastard child of Moby Dick and Kafka, invincible and strange." So, yeah, he's kind of swinging for the fences on this one.
The book does quite a bit to support its ambitions, however; the writing is well done and often quite clever. All the metaphors were original, except in the case where he re-used them within the same book (he is quite fond of vomit, sex, and pooping metaphors; but then again, who isn't? Oh, right). But at times I got the sense that the writing outpaced the story in a negative way in that the narration often got too caught up in wordplay and irony and mining every detail for potential significance.
By the end of the book, I was unsatisfied, but only because the buildup was so marvelous. The resolution of this grand apparatus that Love had so carefully constructed did not match my hopes. If Faith were a less ambitious book I would have enjoyed it more, but not as deeply as the times that it made me really think deeply at the themes at play. Faith is guilty of, dare I say it, over-reaching. The engagement with the ship wasn't enough for Love - like Moby Dick, it had to represent something even larger and grander somehow, but in reaching for that level of significance, the concrete story that supported such a Grand Symbol was undermined in some ways. In the end, the carefully crafted build-up and the quality of the writing make this an excellent recommendation for most science fiction readers.
3.5/5 stars
It's an exciting book, especially as the build-up for the eventual fight between the two ships does such a good job of playing up the mysterious and powerful nature of the enemy ship (called Faith). The actual engagement takes up the majority of the book and goes through several stages, as do the characters on the ship. There's intense back-and-forth between the two ships, each part more interesting and stranger than the first, and as the cleverness and competency of the protagonists meets up against the impossibility of the task, you find yourself rooting quite hard for the good guys.
But Faith is quite ambitious in that it's not just a story of two superships fighting an epic battle. The story heaps themes upon itself at every opportunity, whether it's the Other, irony, faith (duh), solitude, or so on. The ship Faith is strange and ponderous and ideal for hosting symbolism, and Love gets all the mileage he can out of it, and does so well. When the antagonist of an entire novel is a ship, it's difficult to give it the weight of character that Love does so here with such obvious enjoyment. The synopsis calls Faith "the bastard child of Moby Dick and Kafka, invincible and strange." So, yeah, he's kind of swinging for the fences on this one.
The book does quite a bit to support its ambitions, however; the writing is well done and often quite clever. All the metaphors were original, except in the case where he re-used them within the same book (he is quite fond of vomit, sex, and pooping metaphors; but then again, who isn't? Oh, right). But at times I got the sense that the writing outpaced the story in a negative way in that the narration often got too caught up in wordplay and irony and mining every detail for potential significance.
By the end of the book, I was unsatisfied, but only because the buildup was so marvelous. The resolution of this grand apparatus that Love had so carefully constructed did not match my hopes. If Faith were a less ambitious book I would have enjoyed it more, but not as deeply as the times that it made me really think deeply at the themes at play. Faith is guilty of, dare I say it, over-reaching. The engagement with the ship wasn't enough for Love - like Moby Dick, it had to represent something even larger and grander somehow, but in reaching for that level of significance, the concrete story that supported such a Grand Symbol was undermined in some ways. In the end, the carefully crafted build-up and the quality of the writing make this an excellent recommendation for most science fiction readers.
3.5/5 stars
November 9, 2020
Точно пет седмици след зачитането на книгата, най-накрая я затворих.
"Вяра е името, което човечеството е дало на един непознат, вероятно неуязвим чуждоземен кораб, който тероризира колониите на новосъздадената човешка Федерация.
„Аутсайдер� е един от деветте свръхмощни, свръхмодерни бойни кораби на Федерацията. Стройни, сребристи машини за убиване, чиито екипажи са съставени от хора, надарени с уникални способности, но същевременно са социопати или психопати."
Тази част на резюмето на задната корица ме впечатли, и очакванията за една интересна космическа мистерия, каквато имах желанието да прочета, вероятно ме е направило по-нетърпелив от нужното.
Джон Лов наистина е успял да положи основите на сюжет, който би могъл да е първокласен... и тотално се е провалил в осъществяването му. Муден, направо мъчителен стил, за който вероятно допринася и недотам качествният превод, предполагам ("сингуларна" като съществително е просто...). Персонажите на теория са интересни и оригинални - както е споменато, те са социо- и психопати. Проблемът е, че няма живот в почти всички от тях - оставят впечатлението, че са просто лоши актьори, играещи по свирката на писателя, за да приберат хонорара с минимални усилия. Ненужните отклонения и задълбавания в главите им са описани по съвсем непривлекателен за читателя начин.
Развръзката е максимално претупана, а краят поставя една интересна философска теория за вселената, която би могла да провокира нещо повече от отегчение в читателя, ако беше написана/преведена по-добре.
След първите 200-на страници все по-често се връщах към книгата с нежелание, което се поразсея към края, вероятно изместено от нетърпението да я приключа. Оставям я със спомен за опропастени свят, сюжет и герои, и се надявам скоро да не ме спохожда подобна читателска мъка!
"Вяра е името, което човечеството е дало на един непознат, вероятно неуязвим чуждоземен кораб, който тероризира колониите на новосъздадената човешка Федерация.
„Аутсайдер� е един от деветте свръхмощни, свръхмодерни бойни кораби на Федерацията. Стройни, сребристи машини за убиване, чиито екипажи са съставени от хора, надарени с уникални способности, но същевременно са социопати или психопати."
Тази част на резюмето на задната корица ме впечатли, и очакванията за една интересна космическа мистерия, каквато имах желанието да прочета, вероятно ме е направило по-нетърпелив от нужното.
Джон Лов наистина е успял да положи основите на сюжет, който би могъл да е първокласен... и тотално се е провалил в осъществяването му. Муден, направо мъчителен стил, за който вероятно допринася и недотам качествният превод, предполагам ("сингуларна" като съществително е просто...). Персонажите на теория са интересни и оригинални - както е споменато, те са социо- и психопати. Проблемът е, че няма живот в почти всички от тях - оставят впечатлението, че са просто лоши актьори, играещи по свирката на писателя, за да приберат хонорара с минимални усилия. Ненужните отклонения и задълбавания в главите им са описани по съвсем непривлекателен за читателя начин.
Развръзката е максимално претупана, а краят поставя една интересна философска теория за вселената, която би могла да провокира нещо повече от отегчение в читателя, ако беше написана/преведена по-добре.
След първите 200-на страници все по-често се връщах към книгата с нежелание, което се поразсея към края, вероятно изместено от нетърпението да я приключа. Оставям я със спомен за опропастени свят, сюжет и герои, и се надявам скоро да не ме спохожда подобна читателска мъка!
August 1, 2012
John Love's impressive debut cobbles together a bunch of older ideas into something that feels like the freshest space-battle book I've read in a long time. The premise is from Saberhagen's Berserker stories: a mysterious, unstoppable spaceship appears from nowhere, makes no attempt to communicate, and lays waste to civilizations. Those sent to stop it are a Dirty Dozen mix of criminals and malcontents who, because of their evil natures, are able to conceive of and do things that the traditional military can't. The confrontation, which takes up two thirds of the book, plays like the classic Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror" with an obsessive neurotic in place of Kirk and a nigh-omnipotent trickster god in place of the Romulans.
Love's sense of pacing is marvelous, especially in the tensest action scenes where he manages to slow time down to a crawl without dragging the momentum of the narrative. He also manages the difficult task of populating a book entirely with unlikable characters and getting you to invest in them anyway. The main nitpick I have with his writing is that he uses the phrase "the ship turned in its own length" on almost every page, but aside from that one distraction Faith packs a hell of a punch.
Love's sense of pacing is marvelous, especially in the tensest action scenes where he manages to slow time down to a crawl without dragging the momentum of the narrative. He also manages the difficult task of populating a book entirely with unlikable characters and getting you to invest in them anyway. The main nitpick I have with his writing is that he uses the phrase "the ship turned in its own length" on almost every page, but aside from that one distraction Faith packs a hell of a punch.
February 20, 2012
The blurb on the back cover attracted me to this book.
An alien ship called Faith versus the commonwealth represented by the outsider vessel the Charles Manson commanded by Foord and his bunch of sociopaths.
The first 100 pages or so are wasted on Foords journey across land to get back to the Charles Manson to take off and do battle with Faith. Although partly necessary for story setting and character building it seemed to drag pointlessly.
From there onwards the story focuses on the battle, this is where the story comes in to its own. The tension builds rapidly and maintains a high level to the end of the book, where the ending is unique & unparalleled with anything I have read before.
I would certainly recommend this book and were it not for the slow and painful start would have given it a better rating as the characters are interesting and the battle between the two ships is fascinating.
An alien ship called Faith versus the commonwealth represented by the outsider vessel the Charles Manson commanded by Foord and his bunch of sociopaths.
The first 100 pages or so are wasted on Foords journey across land to get back to the Charles Manson to take off and do battle with Faith. Although partly necessary for story setting and character building it seemed to drag pointlessly.
From there onwards the story focuses on the battle, this is where the story comes in to its own. The tension builds rapidly and maintains a high level to the end of the book, where the ending is unique & unparalleled with anything I have read before.
I would certainly recommend this book and were it not for the slow and painful start would have given it a better rating as the characters are interesting and the battle between the two ships is fascinating.
December 2, 2018
Repost 2012 review:
Faith falls a little short of 5 stars for me, but I'm rounding up. My only real problem is with the ending, and I'll come back to that in a bit. While I understand the complaints of some of the other reviewers this one really worked for me and I enjoyed it thoroughly up until I sensed the less than 100% satisfactory ending approaching.
The premise in the blurb, an single ship crewed with psycho and sociopaths sent to stop an unbeatable alien vessel appealed to me a lot, though the first sentence, "His pregnancy convulsions dragged him out of unconsciousness", just about caused me to set it down again. Fortunately, I didn't. The pregnant he is in fact a Sakhran, a species which produces asexually, but for whatever random reason they're all referred to as "he". This pregnant he is one of a couple of preliminary characters whose encounters with the mystery ship "Faith" (or the aftermath thereof) are shown before Commander Foord and the crew of the Outsider ship "Charles Manson" take center stage.
Characterization in the book worked well for me, though not all the crew are drawn in much depth. Foord is arguably the main character and most throughly drawn. Even the preliminary characters were sufficiently well portrayed for me to engage with them, and, strangely, I thought the pregnant Sakhran in the beginning of the book was drawn with more depth than Thahl, the Sakhran first officer of the Charles Manson who is one of the main crew and has way more page time.
Love's writing really stood out for me. It's different, and perhaps not for everyone. But one of the things that interested me about this book and which I would like to examine more closely in a reread is the writing, because he does a lot of things which seem like they should be irritating, or have irritated me in other books, but work here.
On a storytelling/structural level I want to mention a couple things. The preliminaries go on for quite a while, to the extent that by the time Foord took the stage, I wasn't sure the storyline would stick to him or anyone else for any length of time. It's like there was a reeeeeeally long prologue. Or maybe multiple prologues. But as I mentioned, the preliminary characters were interesting and engaging enough that this wasn't a problem for me. What was somewhat problematic was the fact that this is followed by a rather extended journey as Foord and Thahl head back to their ship after a visit with Thahl's "father". For reasons that are never adequately explained Foord insists on making this journey via the Sakhran equivalent of a stagecoach. Now the journey is not entirely uneventful or without interest, but the time dedicated to it makes it seem like it should be more significant or have some repercussions later in the story, but it doesn't.
Second, it's repeatedly stated that the Sakhrans know something about the nature of the ship Faith that they haven't shared with the humans or the Commonwealth. I think most readers will naturally expect this to impact the plot somewhere along the line. Some revelation at a crucial moment, a character conflict over withheld information, or something. The unwritten rules of storytelling demand it, in my opinion. But while it's not forgotten, and it the subject comes up again at the end, it's never properly deployed in the plot. This, I think, is one of the reasons I began to disengage with the story when I started to approach the end.
The unusual nature of the writing lies in its narrower, more localized aspects.
- Love uses repetition extensively. I don't think I've ever seen so much repetition in a novel. And not in the let's remind the reader in case they forgot, or even the author forgot he mentioned this six times already sense. I'm talking about actually word for word repetition of sentences and even small paragraphs. It's sometimes used to portray monotonous repetitive actions. Sometimes to back up a scene a few seconds after cutting away and coming back. One sees this on TV occasionally, but never in books. It's easy to see how this repetition might get irritating if handled badly, but it worked quite well for me.
- There are conversations and exchanges between characters in which something unspoken was clearly communicated, but I'll be damned if I could figure out what it was supposed to be.
- The actual battle scenes in the book have the least tension of any of the scenes in the book.
The repetition is not something I've seen elsewhere, but the last two items, opaque exchanges and flat action scenes are things that have annoyed me in other books. Yet somehow, here, they seem perfectly in keeping with the characters' outsider, psycho/sociopathic natures and it didn't bother me at all.
As I mentioned above, the real disappointment of this book is it's ending. I began to feel myself disengaging from the story as it approached. One reason was the growing certainty that he wasn't going to do anything with the whole Sakhran secret knowledge thing, but also growing awareness that the book had fallen into a classic trap. SF books in particular seem to be prone to aggrandizing an idea, to building up the question, to over-hyping their mystery in such a way that no conceivable resolution, no revelation can measure up. Nothing can fulfill the expectations they've set up. That's exactly what Love has done here, and while final "explanation" of Faith's function might have impressed me when I was ten, it feels trite now, and completely fails to hide the fact that it's not really an answer to the mystery at all, merely a metaphysical kicking of the can down the road.
That said, I enjoyed it greatly up until near the end, and will definitely look forward to John Love's next novel.
Faith falls a little short of 5 stars for me, but I'm rounding up. My only real problem is with the ending, and I'll come back to that in a bit. While I understand the complaints of some of the other reviewers this one really worked for me and I enjoyed it thoroughly up until I sensed the less than 100% satisfactory ending approaching.
The premise in the blurb, an single ship crewed with psycho and sociopaths sent to stop an unbeatable alien vessel appealed to me a lot, though the first sentence, "His pregnancy convulsions dragged him out of unconsciousness", just about caused me to set it down again. Fortunately, I didn't. The pregnant he is in fact a Sakhran, a species which produces asexually, but for whatever random reason they're all referred to as "he". This pregnant he is one of a couple of preliminary characters whose encounters with the mystery ship "Faith" (or the aftermath thereof) are shown before Commander Foord and the crew of the Outsider ship "Charles Manson" take center stage.
Characterization in the book worked well for me, though not all the crew are drawn in much depth. Foord is arguably the main character and most throughly drawn. Even the preliminary characters were sufficiently well portrayed for me to engage with them, and, strangely, I thought the pregnant Sakhran in the beginning of the book was drawn with more depth than Thahl, the Sakhran first officer of the Charles Manson who is one of the main crew and has way more page time.
Love's writing really stood out for me. It's different, and perhaps not for everyone. But one of the things that interested me about this book and which I would like to examine more closely in a reread is the writing, because he does a lot of things which seem like they should be irritating, or have irritated me in other books, but work here.
On a storytelling/structural level I want to mention a couple things. The preliminaries go on for quite a while, to the extent that by the time Foord took the stage, I wasn't sure the storyline would stick to him or anyone else for any length of time. It's like there was a reeeeeeally long prologue. Or maybe multiple prologues. But as I mentioned, the preliminary characters were interesting and engaging enough that this wasn't a problem for me. What was somewhat problematic was the fact that this is followed by a rather extended journey as Foord and Thahl head back to their ship after a visit with Thahl's "father". For reasons that are never adequately explained Foord insists on making this journey via the Sakhran equivalent of a stagecoach. Now the journey is not entirely uneventful or without interest, but the time dedicated to it makes it seem like it should be more significant or have some repercussions later in the story, but it doesn't.
Second, it's repeatedly stated that the Sakhrans know something about the nature of the ship Faith that they haven't shared with the humans or the Commonwealth. I think most readers will naturally expect this to impact the plot somewhere along the line. Some revelation at a crucial moment, a character conflict over withheld information, or something. The unwritten rules of storytelling demand it, in my opinion. But while it's not forgotten, and it the subject comes up again at the end, it's never properly deployed in the plot. This, I think, is one of the reasons I began to disengage with the story when I started to approach the end.
The unusual nature of the writing lies in its narrower, more localized aspects.
- Love uses repetition extensively. I don't think I've ever seen so much repetition in a novel. And not in the let's remind the reader in case they forgot, or even the author forgot he mentioned this six times already sense. I'm talking about actually word for word repetition of sentences and even small paragraphs. It's sometimes used to portray monotonous repetitive actions. Sometimes to back up a scene a few seconds after cutting away and coming back. One sees this on TV occasionally, but never in books. It's easy to see how this repetition might get irritating if handled badly, but it worked quite well for me.
- There are conversations and exchanges between characters in which something unspoken was clearly communicated, but I'll be damned if I could figure out what it was supposed to be.
- The actual battle scenes in the book have the least tension of any of the scenes in the book.
The repetition is not something I've seen elsewhere, but the last two items, opaque exchanges and flat action scenes are things that have annoyed me in other books. Yet somehow, here, they seem perfectly in keeping with the characters' outsider, psycho/sociopathic natures and it didn't bother me at all.
As I mentioned above, the real disappointment of this book is it's ending. I began to feel myself disengaging from the story as it approached. One reason was the growing certainty that he wasn't going to do anything with the whole Sakhran secret knowledge thing, but also growing awareness that the book had fallen into a classic trap. SF books in particular seem to be prone to aggrandizing an idea, to building up the question, to over-hyping their mystery in such a way that no conceivable resolution, no revelation can measure up. Nothing can fulfill the expectations they've set up. That's exactly what Love has done here, and while final "explanation" of Faith's function might have impressed me when I was ten, it feels trite now, and completely fails to hide the fact that it's not really an answer to the mystery at all, merely a metaphysical kicking of the can down the road.
That said, I enjoyed it greatly up until near the end, and will definitely look forward to John Love's next novel.
March 15, 2016
Hundreds of years ago, an advanced alien ship attacked the Sakhran Empire and then disappeared. Shortly after that, the Empire collapsed. Now, hundreds of years later, the ship, dubbed Faith, has been sighted again, and the ship sent after it is the Charles Manson, a ship crewed by psychopaths and criminals who are willing to do whatever's necessary, that must confront and destroy Faith.
I wanted to like his book so much. The premise was pretty cool sounding, and I thought it might hit the spot towards my darker tastes in science fiction like did... the plot, at it's core, even sounded similar... deeply damaged people confronting the alien.
Unfortunately, too much didn't work for me.
Let's start with the description, or rather, how it related to the rest of the book. I suppose it's a bit of a spoiler, but I feel it's a relatively mild one. In some stories, there's a description like this, and it just describes how the book opens, but as the story evolve, it moves far beyond that. In this one, the synopsis pretty well describes the whole book... it's one long engagement between the two ships, starting a bit before and occasionally flashing back to some part of a character's history to keep it from just being a huge fight scene. But for me, it meant I spent a large part of the book just hoping they'd move past the initial confrontation and get interesting.
The disappointment was exacerbated, somewhat, by the approach to science. This isn't hard SF, or even hard SF with a few impossible items... I'd describe it as "cinematic" SF. It's the kind of science fiction that not only has FTL, it invents weapons that do cool but implausible things, where asteroid belts are so full that you have to dodge and weave around rocks, where a pilot can be inexplicably better at piloting than computers centuries more advanced than ours. This is a valid approach to SF, I can enjoy that type, even if it's not my favorite, but in this case, where it's one long engagement between two ships, it just feels like a parade of different made-up tactics against each other, there's no consequences or sense of stakes because the rules aren't grounded in either believable science, or some kind of greater outside world that can make even nonsense believable. It's like an imaginary schoolyard fight where the kids are free to make up whatever powers they want... maybe it's a hell of a lot of fun to them, but to watch? What mysteries are revealed also didn't impress me because my suspension of disbelief was already too strained.
But both of them are potentially minor problems, and perhaps for some people, not even problems at all, especially if the character work is great. This is certainly where the plot of the book is most ambitious... when you design your crew around the concept of "everyone's a psychopath", you're setting yourself a pretty high bar. To succeed I think you either need to dig deep and force the audience to confront the core of humanity behind these outcasts, or make them so interesting and compelling despite being irredeemable monsters that the audience roots for them. The book succeeds at neither. The backstories are mostly trite and told coldly, and in the present day they're fairly bland, occasionally getting into amusing cynical conversations, but never really justifying the premise. That is, I never really got any sense for WHY the Galactic Commonwealth made a crew of criminals and psychopaths and gave them one of their most powerful ships. They don't seem exceptionally talented, with a few exceptions, most of which feel like authorial fiat, so it seems like there are far better hands to put your greatest starship in the care of. Aside from occasionally being rude to planetary authorities (which could just as easily be a matter of policy), they never step outside of a box of what conventional morality would allow. So it winds up feeling like a gimmick. You could replace the crew with Captain Kirk and the Enterprise and perhaps be even more effective because you don't have to worry as much about them maybe deciding to go rogue (well, then again, with Captain Kirk, maybe that's not the best example). Now, they do occasionally have flashes of insights that I suppose could be attributed to their "out of the box thinking", but really it's just over and over again the characters getting feelings that there's no evidence for that turn out to be right, which makes them feel more like puppets than characters. It's not just the crew, either, there's the alien race that "turned away from one another" because of the insight from the last encounter, just because. People, singly or collectively, don't seem to come to rational conclusions, they decide what the author wants them to decide. Made worse because the alien threat is the same way, it's defined as incomprehensible and super powerful and there's the constant feeling that it's just toying with them, stretching out the battle for no reason other than it wants to, which really means because the author wants to, he needs to fill pages.
What's most frustrating is that the book's not all bad. A few individual sections are genuinely interesting, particularly the beginning, and the alien race that faced Faith before was actually pretty well done, a good attempt at alien worldbuilding. Some of the conversations among the crew had me smiling along, too. And a few of the ideas, invented technologies or staging areas for battle, were really quite cool, taken in isolation, it's the collective effect of all of it put together that failed for me. I also think that I, personally, may have been more hostile to the ending than other people would be... it's very much the kind of thing I can see someone else finding an interesting, mind-blowing idea, but for me, it just made me roll my eyes and say, "Really?" and it tainted my enjoyment of ant tolerance for elements of the rest of the book. I didn't hate the book, but I'm so divided on it that I can't even say I "liked it", unreservedly, so I have to just say, "it's okay."
It is, however, the author's first novel, so I won't give up on him entirely, but I have to give it a two because I was so disappointed with how it turned out.
I wanted to like his book so much. The premise was pretty cool sounding, and I thought it might hit the spot towards my darker tastes in science fiction like did... the plot, at it's core, even sounded similar... deeply damaged people confronting the alien.
Unfortunately, too much didn't work for me.
Let's start with the description, or rather, how it related to the rest of the book. I suppose it's a bit of a spoiler, but I feel it's a relatively mild one. In some stories, there's a description like this, and it just describes how the book opens, but as the story evolve, it moves far beyond that. In this one, the synopsis pretty well describes the whole book... it's one long engagement between the two ships, starting a bit before and occasionally flashing back to some part of a character's history to keep it from just being a huge fight scene. But for me, it meant I spent a large part of the book just hoping they'd move past the initial confrontation and get interesting.
The disappointment was exacerbated, somewhat, by the approach to science. This isn't hard SF, or even hard SF with a few impossible items... I'd describe it as "cinematic" SF. It's the kind of science fiction that not only has FTL, it invents weapons that do cool but implausible things, where asteroid belts are so full that you have to dodge and weave around rocks, where a pilot can be inexplicably better at piloting than computers centuries more advanced than ours. This is a valid approach to SF, I can enjoy that type, even if it's not my favorite, but in this case, where it's one long engagement between two ships, it just feels like a parade of different made-up tactics against each other, there's no consequences or sense of stakes because the rules aren't grounded in either believable science, or some kind of greater outside world that can make even nonsense believable. It's like an imaginary schoolyard fight where the kids are free to make up whatever powers they want... maybe it's a hell of a lot of fun to them, but to watch? What mysteries are revealed also didn't impress me because my suspension of disbelief was already too strained.
But both of them are potentially minor problems, and perhaps for some people, not even problems at all, especially if the character work is great. This is certainly where the plot of the book is most ambitious... when you design your crew around the concept of "everyone's a psychopath", you're setting yourself a pretty high bar. To succeed I think you either need to dig deep and force the audience to confront the core of humanity behind these outcasts, or make them so interesting and compelling despite being irredeemable monsters that the audience roots for them. The book succeeds at neither. The backstories are mostly trite and told coldly, and in the present day they're fairly bland, occasionally getting into amusing cynical conversations, but never really justifying the premise. That is, I never really got any sense for WHY the Galactic Commonwealth made a crew of criminals and psychopaths and gave them one of their most powerful ships. They don't seem exceptionally talented, with a few exceptions, most of which feel like authorial fiat, so it seems like there are far better hands to put your greatest starship in the care of. Aside from occasionally being rude to planetary authorities (which could just as easily be a matter of policy), they never step outside of a box of what conventional morality would allow. So it winds up feeling like a gimmick. You could replace the crew with Captain Kirk and the Enterprise and perhaps be even more effective because you don't have to worry as much about them maybe deciding to go rogue (well, then again, with Captain Kirk, maybe that's not the best example). Now, they do occasionally have flashes of insights that I suppose could be attributed to their "out of the box thinking", but really it's just over and over again the characters getting feelings that there's no evidence for that turn out to be right, which makes them feel more like puppets than characters. It's not just the crew, either, there's the alien race that "turned away from one another" because of the insight from the last encounter, just because. People, singly or collectively, don't seem to come to rational conclusions, they decide what the author wants them to decide. Made worse because the alien threat is the same way, it's defined as incomprehensible and super powerful and there's the constant feeling that it's just toying with them, stretching out the battle for no reason other than it wants to, which really means because the author wants to, he needs to fill pages.
What's most frustrating is that the book's not all bad. A few individual sections are genuinely interesting, particularly the beginning, and the alien race that faced Faith before was actually pretty well done, a good attempt at alien worldbuilding. Some of the conversations among the crew had me smiling along, too. And a few of the ideas, invented technologies or staging areas for battle, were really quite cool, taken in isolation, it's the collective effect of all of it put together that failed for me. I also think that I, personally, may have been more hostile to the ending than other people would be... it's very much the kind of thing I can see someone else finding an interesting, mind-blowing idea, but for me, it just made me roll my eyes and say, "Really?" and it tainted my enjoyment of ant tolerance for elements of the rest of the book. I didn't hate the book, but I'm so divided on it that I can't even say I "liked it", unreservedly, so I have to just say, "it's okay."
It is, however, the author's first novel, so I won't give up on him entirely, but I have to give it a two because I was so disappointed with how it turned out.
June 12, 2015
A lot of reviews compare this book to Moby Dick. I can see the resemblance. I think it's superficial, but I think the author, John Love, was reaching for something deep and epic in this novel-length tale of two unique starships doing battle across a solar system. I admire his ambition, and I'd like Faith to have been one of those rare works of truly grand, literary science fiction. I've only seen a few authors pull that off � Ursula Le Guin, Dan Simmons, and a handful of deeply underappreciated authors like Thomas A. Day, with his A Grey Moon Over China or Richard Russo's Ship of Fools.
Faith doesn't quite get there, in part because Love's writing frequently tips from audacious to pretentious, and because whatever metaphor there is supposed to be in the book is handwaved with metaphysical flim-flam that reminded me most strongly of the ending of Disney's 1979 movie .
Faith is the name of a mysterious ship that visited the Sakhran homeworld three hundred years ago. Alien, inscrutable, invincible, it brought the Sakhran Empire to its knees and then departed. Now, with the Earth Commonwealth expanding into the vacuum left by the Sakhran Empire, Faith returns.
To fight it, the Commonwealth sends the Outsider-class vessel Charles Manson to engage with it. Outsider vessels are unique ships with the most advanced technology the Commonwealth possesses, and crewed by misfit geniuses and sociopaths.
It's a gripping concept, if not something we haven't seen before - take your misfit psychos who just happen to be the very best at killing people and blowing shit up, and send them against the unbeatable invader to save the world. And over the course of the novel, as the Charles Manson and Faith engage, using tactics and technology that range from unorthodox to inexplicable, I can kind of see Captain Ahab in Commander Foord, raising a fist and saying "From hell's heart I stab at thee!"
The problem is, too much is just told to us � Foord knows what Faith is going to do because he... just knows. Likewise his crew: Thahl, the Sakhran first officer who is Spock to Foord's Kirk, Cyr, the sexy and bloodthirsty weapons officer, Kang, the preternatural pilot who is otherwise an unremarkable nothing, and Smithson, the glistening, acerbic, genius gadgeteer alien engineer, they are all interesting and twisted, and gradually bits and pieces of their true selves emerge, but there is too much intuition and unexplained giftedness that just appears out of nowhere as required by the plot.
The mystery of Faith - what She is, who built Her, what Her motives are - looms over the entire book, and while there is an explanation and resolution of sorts at the end, I didn't feel it lived up to its promise.
This is not a bad book - it's a good book trying to be a great book - but as a debut novel it shows roughness in the story and even more in the writing. (Love uses a lot of phrases repetitively to the point of distraction, like the alarms that keep sounding "politely" and the ship's jets that always "fountain.")
I recommend Faith for fans of space opera that's a little off-beat, a little ambitious, and if the idea of an obsessive duel between two evenly matched, strange and lethal starships with bizarre and unknowable crews sounds interesting, it's definitely worth your time. The execution fell a bit short for me, making this a solid 3.5 star book, which I will round up to 4, but consider it a qualified 4 stars.
Faith doesn't quite get there, in part because Love's writing frequently tips from audacious to pretentious, and because whatever metaphor there is supposed to be in the book is handwaved with metaphysical flim-flam that reminded me most strongly of the ending of Disney's 1979 movie .
Faith is the name of a mysterious ship that visited the Sakhran homeworld three hundred years ago. Alien, inscrutable, invincible, it brought the Sakhran Empire to its knees and then departed. Now, with the Earth Commonwealth expanding into the vacuum left by the Sakhran Empire, Faith returns.
To fight it, the Commonwealth sends the Outsider-class vessel Charles Manson to engage with it. Outsider vessels are unique ships with the most advanced technology the Commonwealth possesses, and crewed by misfit geniuses and sociopaths.
It's a gripping concept, if not something we haven't seen before - take your misfit psychos who just happen to be the very best at killing people and blowing shit up, and send them against the unbeatable invader to save the world. And over the course of the novel, as the Charles Manson and Faith engage, using tactics and technology that range from unorthodox to inexplicable, I can kind of see Captain Ahab in Commander Foord, raising a fist and saying "From hell's heart I stab at thee!"
The problem is, too much is just told to us � Foord knows what Faith is going to do because he... just knows. Likewise his crew: Thahl, the Sakhran first officer who is Spock to Foord's Kirk, Cyr, the sexy and bloodthirsty weapons officer, Kang, the preternatural pilot who is otherwise an unremarkable nothing, and Smithson, the glistening, acerbic, genius gadgeteer alien engineer, they are all interesting and twisted, and gradually bits and pieces of their true selves emerge, but there is too much intuition and unexplained giftedness that just appears out of nowhere as required by the plot.
The mystery of Faith - what She is, who built Her, what Her motives are - looms over the entire book, and while there is an explanation and resolution of sorts at the end, I didn't feel it lived up to its promise.
This is not a bad book - it's a good book trying to be a great book - but as a debut novel it shows roughness in the story and even more in the writing. (Love uses a lot of phrases repetitively to the point of distraction, like the alarms that keep sounding "politely" and the ship's jets that always "fountain.")
I recommend Faith for fans of space opera that's a little off-beat, a little ambitious, and if the idea of an obsessive duel between two evenly matched, strange and lethal starships with bizarre and unknowable crews sounds interesting, it's definitely worth your time. The execution fell a bit short for me, making this a solid 3.5 star book, which I will round up to 4, but consider it a qualified 4 stars.
January 8, 2012
When reading this book (I read it in three sessions), my mind wandered as to what kind of former book it most likely was "like."
This is definitely not really space opera. Yes, it is spaceships battling each other, as in a space opera (I love space opera), but that isn't really what it is ABOUT. It is about... well ... hmm hard to describe.
Really, need to read it to understand. The closest book I can describe it to was/is . Like that book, there is often the mood of despair, of an alien or alien species to which we are but some type of plaything.
But unlike Blindsight - the protagonist Aaron Foord ends up doing pretty well. Relatively speaking. Which may actually end up being a bad thing.
And the "answer" to the mystery of Faith is, as far as I know, totally unique. I can't recall any other book that came up with this - and doing something unique nowadays in space opera sci-fi is tough.
I'm sure this book will get nominated for a few awards this year. Whether it'll win them, will depend on the competition - but most likely it'll win a few.
[small spoiler hint ahead]
This has to do with a new solution to the conundrum of the Fermi paradox.
This is definitely not really space opera. Yes, it is spaceships battling each other, as in a space opera (I love space opera), but that isn't really what it is ABOUT. It is about... well ... hmm hard to describe.
Really, need to read it to understand. The closest book I can describe it to was/is . Like that book, there is often the mood of despair, of an alien or alien species to which we are but some type of plaything.
But unlike Blindsight - the protagonist Aaron Foord ends up doing pretty well. Relatively speaking. Which may actually end up being a bad thing.
And the "answer" to the mystery of Faith is, as far as I know, totally unique. I can't recall any other book that came up with this - and doing something unique nowadays in space opera sci-fi is tough.
I'm sure this book will get nominated for a few awards this year. Whether it'll win them, will depend on the competition - but most likely it'll win a few.
[small spoiler hint ahead]
This has to do with a new solution to the conundrum of the Fermi paradox.
March 3, 2015
A science fiction tale melding hard science (mostly correct), with first (well, second) contact of a really weird kind, with a prolonged (almost book-long) space battle. Our protagonists are a bunch of loveable (well, not really) misfits who distrust even each other led by an ego-maniac (nothing new there) commander, who better come up with a plan that’s better than his ship, his crew and himself or civilization will be toast.
Nice cover art.
Some good action and introspection, but the worm Ouroboros ending kind of dulls the edge. If you can force yourself, don't read the last chapter. Oh, it’s all philosophic and deep, but it's rigid determinism rules out free will and ruins the fun.
Nice cover art.
Some good action and introspection, but the worm Ouroboros ending kind of dulls the edge. If you can force yourself, don't read the last chapter. Oh, it’s all philosophic and deep, but it's rigid determinism rules out free will and ruins the fun.
July 4, 2012
After I've finished Faith, I was absolutely exhausted. 300 pages of one space battle between two invincible space-ships. But what an interesting journey: the mysteries of the alien ship, the silence of space, the darkness of characters, the uncompromising ending.
August 13, 2012
A year ago, an upcoming Sci-Fi novel about a battle between two indestructible spaceships. , and according to io9, thePublisher's Marketplace description of the book was as follows:
a sci-fi mix of Moby Dick and the classic movie Duel, in which an unknown, invincible, Kafkaesque alien ship has returned 300 years after breaking one galactic empire to now threaten the human Commonwealth, and the best and brightest minds that are sent in a invincible ship of their own to stop it, with the only problem being that those best and brightest are also some of the Commonwealth's most twisted sociopaths and if they win, the human empire may find itself in more danger than ever.
I can't tell you why, exactly, but I really wanted to read this book. The problem was that the article was posted well before the actual release date of January, 2012. In the intervening months, I kept forgetting the name of the book, the author (this is his first novel), and where the heck I had saved the information. Finally, early this summer, I tracked it down. It took some searching, but I found the info about the book again. And I contacted Nightshade Books to see about getting a review copy. It took them a while, too, but at long last they were gracious enough to send me one.
Let's cut to the chase. I finished Faith last night, and to be honest, I'm still digesting it. It starts out incredibly slow - so slow, in fact, that I almost gave up on it. I typically follow a loosely-imposed 3 chapter rule: if you don't hook me within the first 3 chapters, I'm done with the book. The way I see it, I'm being more gracious than most editors. Word is, if you don't hook them in the first page, you're up a certain creek with no oars.
Faith has a story that really doesn't kick in until 30% of the way through the book. The character and back story development that happens before that feels tacked on, like maybe it was necessary for the author to flesh out the world, but that it should have either been left on the editing room floor, or somewhat more sparsely interspersed throughout the narrative. That's my first complaint about this book.
My second? Errors that shouldn't be showing up in a for-publication copy. Typos in a couple spots, but more than that, repetition. Repetition of phrases, or of words, in a way that tells me it's not just the author flexing his prosaic muscles. The kind of repetition every writer struggles with as they knock out a first draft, but the kind that gets cleared up on a second or third pass. Certainly something that gets taken care of when an editor comes at the manuscript wielding a red pen. Interestingly, most of these errors seemed to show up in the unnecessary initial 30% of the book, which lends weight to my argument that that section needed to go, but it also puts up further obstacles to intrepid readers wanting to find out what Faith is all about. Again, I almost gave up on this book. (I'm glad I didn't, though. More on that in a second.)
My final complaints are these: at times, Love's descriptive phrasing left me very confused. I tend to assume that when that happens, maybe I'm just being stupid (like I always was in math class) and I give the author the benefit of the doubt. But when it comes to Love's use of some of the most mind-bogglingly bad metaphors ever committed to print, I know it's him, not me. No,really.Try this one on for size:
The sky—a grey inverted bowl shot with high trailing clouds, like the roof of a giant mouth streaked with mucus—had again started to be full of them, like it was last night.
Or how about:
The chimaera breathed heavily and rhythmically as they walked, like masturbating dinosaurs; for them, it was the last stage of a long journey.
Ok wait, just one more:
It was a silver jewel-box full of functionality: drives and weapons and sentience cores, bionics and electronics and power sources, scanners and signals and life support, all packed to almost dwarf-star density. Externally beautiful, but internally dark and cramped, like a silver evening gown hiding ragged underwear.
You see what I mean? Painful. When I read these, I found myself wondering if the book was written by a horny teenager. Then I looked him up. John Love looks like this:
[caption id="attachment_612" align="aligncenter" width="169"] Source:
Definitely not a horny teenager. Then I read his bio, which begins:
John Love spent most of his working life in the music industry.
So maybe my assumption was mostly correct. In any event, I had to get all my complaining out of the way up front. These are real issues, and they really do affect the readability of the book. But you shouldn't let any of this stop you. Because Faith is a brilliant freaking book. It shows more imagination, more creativity, more conceptual thinking than any Sci-Fi novel I can think of. And I read a lot of them.
So here's where things get a little spoilery. I will keep big revelations to a minimum and just focus on the outline of things.
Faith is about a universe in which humans and other species live in relative peace, but something has gone horribly awry. 300 years before the story begins, a mysterious ship appears and begins decimating one of the most powerful cultures in the galaxy. It only attacks them militarily, never in civilian populations, but the effect is enough to cause their civilization to falter and turn inward, to become a race which is described as "together...always less than the sum total of the individual parts." A sacred book is written about the encounter, and the entire ordeal shapes the path of this species forever.
Enter the present timeline. The ship - called Faith because:
Three hundred years ago the same unidentified ship had visited Sakhra, and left it devastated. One Sakhran recognised what the ship was, and wrote the Book of Srahr, and when they read it they turned away from each other. The Sakhran Empire went into a slow but irreversible decline, and was later absorbed by the Commonwealth. Sakhrans were mostly agnostic, and they called the ship Faith out of self-mockery. Faith was something they didn’t understand and didn’t want; it had come to them suddenly and without invitation; it would not be denied; and when it left them, which it did as suddenly as it came, they were ruined. They would never recover.
On balance, Faith seemed a good name.
I appreciate the irony of the name. It's an earthy, lived-in sort of irony. It smacks of experience of the dark night of the soul. And the ship that is sent to counter Faith is filled with individuals who know no other type of night than a dark night. Sociopaths all, some even psychopaths, those who crew the 9 Outsider ships strong enough to face this unknown peril are sick, twisted, brilliant individuals. Unwelcome elsewhere, but particularly well suited as instruments of destruction on an all-powerful ship.
The ship chosen for this task - to fight Faith, alone, as is the Outsider way - is the Charles Manson. The name of the ship alone tells a good part of its story.
When the engagement begins, the book transforms from a cure for insomnia to a gripping page turner. Love infuses the battle with brilliance, beauty, and an incredible depth of creativity. These two unstoppable opponents, who communicate not in words but in actions, who seek to anticipate each other's moves and simply out-know each other, are amazing to behold. It is less a war of attrition and more a war of anticipation. The battle is decided in small, laborious ways. It comes down to who can better outflank, outmaneuver, or out-trick the other. From the outset it is clear that whoever or whatever is piloting Faith is at an advantage, and even the normal rules of physics do not apply to her strategies and tactics.
The book ends somewhat unlike it began: abruptly, surprisingly. The final, decisive battle of the engagement is described almost as an afterthought, but the description of what happened, of what Faith is, how the interaction of the Charles Manson's crew with her changes them, and how things all shake out in the end is still worth the price of admission.
This is a book that at first resists you. Then it grabs you. Then it appalls and fascinates you. Then it abandons you. Then it grows on you. And it keeps growing on me. If it continues to grow on me, I may just have to buy a physical copy to add to my library, my hall of fame of books that most impress, influence, or inspire me. I know that as a writer, I will be drawing from this deep well for some time to come. Like the crew of the Charles Manson, I feel that my encounter with Faith has changed me in ways I never could have anticipated.
Faith is undoubtedly rough around the edges. But it's a genius bit of writing, and an absolute home run for first-timer John Love. I don't know if an author can write a magnum opus like this right out of the gate and ever hope to capture that kind of magic again, no matter how much he refines his craft in the process. I hope he tries, though. I can't wait to see what he'll come up with next.
February 25, 2018
- Изключително нелогична книга
- Крайно безинтересни персонажи
- Досадно психеделична накрая
- Крайно безинтересни персонажи
- Досадно психеделична накрая
March 16, 2012
Pure space opera. Faith kept me reading breathlessly through the whole book. After about the first hundred pages, it's really just one gigantic space battle, ship to ship. The crew of the Charles Manson, an Outsider class ship, take on Faith, also known as Her. Faith is an enigmatic ship that has led to the decline of one civilization and has appeared again after about 300 years. It is feared that She will destroy another burgeoning empire if She is allowed to continue.
An Outsider class ship is crewed by the most disturbed of people, chosen from the dregs of prisons and mental institutions. There are only nine Outsider class ships in this empire, not because there couldn't be more but because no more are wanted.
There are a lot of great things about this book. Love is a master at building tension. His reptilian civilization in decline is awesome, and I would have liked more details. I like anti-heroes, and I think he does them well. The space battle continuously gave me ideas I hadn't thought of before. Wonderful imagery, just gorgeous.
Flaws: I loved the book while reading it. I thought about it quite a bit afterwards. The more I thought about it, the more gaping plot holes I saw. *** SPOILERS***
About 50 pages in the book are taken up by the captain of the Charles Manson taking what amounts to a carriage ride back to his ship. No reason is ever given as to why he does so. The consequences are tragic. If this is meant to be a window into the captain's character, it doesn't succeed. I couldn't figure out why he did it and was annoyed at the lack of exposition there. The captain was the least damaged, weakest character on the Manson, and it was never certain why or how exactly he was in charge. (quick thought- maybe the fact that he's weak and controllable is why?) The only female character dresses like a school girl(literally) and is over-sexed. At least, though, she is interesting and hard-headed.
The reason for the alien ship is interesting, but I thought that the ship itself didn't make too much sense. It should have been able to overpower anything. But then I guess there would have been no book.
The battle goes on in great detail, then suddenly the book ends, having skipped over some major character deaths. It's as though the author just was done with the subject and fast-forwarded to the end.
So because of those flaws, the book doesn't quite get four stars from me. But I did think the author has great talent and would read another book by him.
An Outsider class ship is crewed by the most disturbed of people, chosen from the dregs of prisons and mental institutions. There are only nine Outsider class ships in this empire, not because there couldn't be more but because no more are wanted.
There are a lot of great things about this book. Love is a master at building tension. His reptilian civilization in decline is awesome, and I would have liked more details. I like anti-heroes, and I think he does them well. The space battle continuously gave me ideas I hadn't thought of before. Wonderful imagery, just gorgeous.
Flaws: I loved the book while reading it. I thought about it quite a bit afterwards. The more I thought about it, the more gaping plot holes I saw. *** SPOILERS***
About 50 pages in the book are taken up by the captain of the Charles Manson taking what amounts to a carriage ride back to his ship. No reason is ever given as to why he does so. The consequences are tragic. If this is meant to be a window into the captain's character, it doesn't succeed. I couldn't figure out why he did it and was annoyed at the lack of exposition there. The captain was the least damaged, weakest character on the Manson, and it was never certain why or how exactly he was in charge. (quick thought- maybe the fact that he's weak and controllable is why?) The only female character dresses like a school girl(literally) and is over-sexed. At least, though, she is interesting and hard-headed.
The reason for the alien ship is interesting, but I thought that the ship itself didn't make too much sense. It should have been able to overpower anything. But then I guess there would have been no book.
The battle goes on in great detail, then suddenly the book ends, having skipped over some major character deaths. It's as though the author just was done with the subject and fast-forwarded to the end.
So because of those flaws, the book doesn't quite get four stars from me. But I did think the author has great talent and would read another book by him.
February 8, 2012
At its best, a splendid tale of two warships dooking it out in an extended battle across a solar system. The good parts are, however, intertwined with wordy psychological probes of the characters and overly detailed descriptions of inscrutable events--but what really spoiled it for me was the author's near total disregard for the laws of physics (he has ships stopping and turning in space) and a concept of battle that is little different from old timey naval engagements, with ships whaling away at one another from distances of a few feet. For that sort of thing, I'll stick with Patrick O'Brian.
June 14, 2012
3.25 stars.
Good ideas but utterly loathsome characters. I guess that's the point? But I still didn't enjoy that aspect of the book. Also there's an utterly tedious middle section which is over a hundred pages of "Let's try and shoot Her with this gun! Oh that didn't work. Okay let's try and shoot Her with this gun! Oh that didn't work. Okay let's try..." and so on.
I liked the last 20% or so much more than the rest of the book.
Good ideas but utterly loathsome characters. I guess that's the point? But I still didn't enjoy that aspect of the book. Also there's an utterly tedious middle section which is over a hundred pages of "Let's try and shoot Her with this gun! Oh that didn't work. Okay let's try and shoot Her with this gun! Oh that didn't work. Okay let's try..." and so on.
I liked the last 20% or so much more than the rest of the book.
April 2, 2013
The bad news: a trite conclusion and a muddled but very simple plot: the bulk of the novel is a running space battle between two armed ships. At times, the weapons used seem mystical and magic rather than technological. And, really, we spend too much time inside the heads of the human ship's officers.
The good news: two very interesting alien species and excellent writing. I'm not sorry I read this, but I will read reviews before investing in Love's second novel.
The good news: two very interesting alien species and excellent writing. I'm not sorry I read this, but I will read reviews before investing in Love's second novel.
September 5, 2017
The biggest problem of this book is that it breaks the famous 'show, don't tell' rule (which can also be applied to books). We are told that Foord and his crew are borderline genius (with the exception of Kaang). But is this premise justified in the text? I dare say no, 'cause they behave and act like idiots half the time. Foord never does anything remotely smart. More than that, we're not even shown why he's respected by his crew. We're told that he is, yes, but never shown.
And that is the biggest flaw of 'Faith', even compared to the weird first quarter, to the fact that the pay-off is pretty bland and to the tedious double- and tripletalk.
And that is the biggest flaw of 'Faith', even compared to the weird first quarter, to the fact that the pay-off is pretty bland and to the tedious double- and tripletalk.
February 6, 2018
This was an interesting and different science fiction novel. I wasn't sure at times if I liked it, especially as I learned more about the central characters and their backgrounds, but I kept going and enjoyed it in the end. It is definitely not space opera. It required a lot of attention because the story is deep, and dark, and complicated, and sometimes you won't be quite sure what is going on or why. But at the end it is worth it and will make you think. Give it a try.
October 20, 2018
It's Moby Dick in SPPPAAAAAACCEE!
Compelling, but it is hard for me to really say I enjoy a story where all the characters are sociopaths (at best).
It's maybe one setting more optimistic from Peter Watts.
Compelling, but it is hard for me to really say I enjoy a story where all the characters are sociopaths (at best).
It's maybe one setting more optimistic from Peter Watts.
November 6, 2017
Неплохая в целом фантастика. Но и особо похвалить не могу. Атмосферно, но уж очень местами уныло.
October 1, 2018
Тя ... вечна и момента. Тайнствена и загадъчна ... Тя идва ... винаги идва ... но дали този път за да унищожи или за да ни помогне да се намерим ...
April 27, 2015
This book had an interesting premise, and a few fairly original ideas, but the execution fell flat - the characters didn't make sense, several plot points didn't make sense, the writing was self-indulgent and repetitive, and the science was wrong.
I'm giving it two stars because it held on to me enough to get me to read through till the end, but I didn't particularly enjoy it along the way, and I actually found myself skipping paragraphs at a time as the book wore on because it was constant menial description that I'd already had my fill of. With most books, I get myself in trouble doing that... with this one, I found that skipping several paragraphs rarely caused any confusion. Which I suppose means that they were devoid of critical content.
A list of things to improve:
Show, don't tell. This book demonstrates exactly how NOT to do this. We're told how crazy the crew is, how unstoppable the Charles Manson is, how hated the outsiders are, but the actual actions of the characters don't live up to the hype.
Science. The Charles Manson is claimed to exceed the capabilities of other ships by orders of magnitude. Note the plural. This is a factor of 100x. This would be like a car with 100hp compared to a car with 10,000hp. This isn't believable from an engineering standpoint, materials properties in this sense don't work logarithmically.
Description. Why must everything be the color of bruises, and urine, and feces? We get it, you are trying to be gritty, but at least be original. Every one of these comparisons was used over and over again. The constant similes were heavy-handed.
Command structures. Despite continual challenges and direct disobedience of orders, at no point does Foord assert his authority on the bridge. He's a terrible captain, and with a crew like that I cannot believe that he would maintain control of the ship for more than 10 minutes.
Science (#2): Why could Faith outpace Charles Manson on ion drive, but not escape within the asteroid belt?
Make your character decisions sensible. The whole beginning with Foord insisting on the chariot is both pointless and far too long. It seems like he is trying to make a point with the planetary defense people, but what? The characters seem to act randomly - and not because of internal compulsions, but because the author doesn't understand their motivations at all, or make them act accordingly.
Science (#3): The author doesn't understand orbital mechanics at all. If the ship was truly trapped in Horus 4's gravity well, burning at apoapsis (which he calls the "high point") wouldn't do shit for them - they would need to burn at periapsis. This could have easily been written more accurately and with more tension if he did his research better.
Don't repeat yourself. There were multiple times that I read a sentence, and looked back 3 paragraphs and saw that it was a marginally different restatement of something I had just read. The book was tedious for this reason.
Explain what's needed, don't explain what isn't needed. Some very simple concepts were reiterated over and over again, while some gaping plot issues were glossed over. For instance, the entire second half of the book, with Faith's demise, is full of weak philosophical musing that must seem deep to the author but runs out of steam quickly. Trying to stretch a meager idea (some kind of universal God ship thing that keeps the universe in balance) way, way too far. On the other hand, it is never explained AT ALL why in the hell any government, ever, would put the most powerful ships in the hands of psychopaths. The entire premise is totally empty and unexplained.
Don't use gimmicks. There are lots of goofy places where punctuation is screwed with, presumably for some kind of edgy dramatic effect, but for the most part the effect is used indiscriminately and seems to be there to try to make substandard writing more impactful. You need to earn the right to do that... learn the rules before you start breaking them.
Science (4, 5): Ships don't need to maintain power to maintain speed: An object in motion remains in motion. Ships that are stationary will not start floundering around when their systems fail: An object at rest remains at rest.
I could go on for quite a while... the point is, this isn't a very good book. It could become one, but this reads like a rough draft with a couple original ideas that needs to go through serious edits, and maybe then, just maybe, it will be worth publishing.
I'm giving it two stars because it held on to me enough to get me to read through till the end, but I didn't particularly enjoy it along the way, and I actually found myself skipping paragraphs at a time as the book wore on because it was constant menial description that I'd already had my fill of. With most books, I get myself in trouble doing that... with this one, I found that skipping several paragraphs rarely caused any confusion. Which I suppose means that they were devoid of critical content.
A list of things to improve:
Show, don't tell. This book demonstrates exactly how NOT to do this. We're told how crazy the crew is, how unstoppable the Charles Manson is, how hated the outsiders are, but the actual actions of the characters don't live up to the hype.
Science. The Charles Manson is claimed to exceed the capabilities of other ships by orders of magnitude. Note the plural. This is a factor of 100x. This would be like a car with 100hp compared to a car with 10,000hp. This isn't believable from an engineering standpoint, materials properties in this sense don't work logarithmically.
Description. Why must everything be the color of bruises, and urine, and feces? We get it, you are trying to be gritty, but at least be original. Every one of these comparisons was used over and over again. The constant similes were heavy-handed.
Command structures. Despite continual challenges and direct disobedience of orders, at no point does Foord assert his authority on the bridge. He's a terrible captain, and with a crew like that I cannot believe that he would maintain control of the ship for more than 10 minutes.
Science (#2): Why could Faith outpace Charles Manson on ion drive, but not escape within the asteroid belt?
Make your character decisions sensible. The whole beginning with Foord insisting on the chariot is both pointless and far too long. It seems like he is trying to make a point with the planetary defense people, but what? The characters seem to act randomly - and not because of internal compulsions, but because the author doesn't understand their motivations at all, or make them act accordingly.
Science (#3): The author doesn't understand orbital mechanics at all. If the ship was truly trapped in Horus 4's gravity well, burning at apoapsis (which he calls the "high point") wouldn't do shit for them - they would need to burn at periapsis. This could have easily been written more accurately and with more tension if he did his research better.
Don't repeat yourself. There were multiple times that I read a sentence, and looked back 3 paragraphs and saw that it was a marginally different restatement of something I had just read. The book was tedious for this reason.
Explain what's needed, don't explain what isn't needed. Some very simple concepts were reiterated over and over again, while some gaping plot issues were glossed over. For instance, the entire second half of the book, with Faith's demise, is full of weak philosophical musing that must seem deep to the author but runs out of steam quickly. Trying to stretch a meager idea (some kind of universal God ship thing that keeps the universe in balance) way, way too far. On the other hand, it is never explained AT ALL why in the hell any government, ever, would put the most powerful ships in the hands of psychopaths. The entire premise is totally empty and unexplained.
Don't use gimmicks. There are lots of goofy places where punctuation is screwed with, presumably for some kind of edgy dramatic effect, but for the most part the effect is used indiscriminately and seems to be there to try to make substandard writing more impactful. You need to earn the right to do that... learn the rules before you start breaking them.
Science (4, 5): Ships don't need to maintain power to maintain speed: An object in motion remains in motion. Ships that are stationary will not start floundering around when their systems fail: An object at rest remains at rest.
I could go on for quite a while... the point is, this isn't a very good book. It could become one, but this reads like a rough draft with a couple original ideas that needs to go through serious edits, and maybe then, just maybe, it will be worth publishing.
January 6, 2013
(Originally reviewed on )
I really wanted to like this book. Really, I did. I plodded along until the end, hoping that the answer to the riddle would end up being worth all the difficulty of reading it. Unfortunately, it didn’t, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Faith by John Love had a lot of promise for a science fiction fan. Futuristic technology, alien cultures, and a ship � named Faith by the aliens that first encountered it � that attacks planets for a reason no one can determine. In order to combat Faith, the Commonwealth created the Outsiders, ships with technology never before seen, crewed by the outcast of society. If any ship can defeat Faith, the Outsiders can.
Unfortunately, the negatives in this book far outweigh the positives. For example, the ship we follow is named the Charles Manson. The crew are not just misfits, they’re unlovable misfits. It’s all but impossible to create any sort of emotional connection with these characters. When one of them suicides on the bridge, the commander leaves his blood and brains on his consoles. In another scene, when the Commander is trying to return to his ship through a demonstration at the starport, one of his crew shoots and kills a civilian official, and the Commander does nothing about it. Faith (or perhaps the author) also seems to have a fascination with� well� excrement. In at least two scenes I can think of off the top of my head, the mysterious enemy ship dumps this� stuff on its opponents.
The Outsiders are run by an arm of the Commonwealth that’s only known as the Department of Administrative Affairs, a mysterious group who only communicates by voice, and through archaic stand microphones on the bridge of each Outsider. The officer in command of the ships are called “Commander,� because it’s the Department that’s the real Captain. At one point in the book it looks like the crew of the Charles Manson might actually start a fight against this regime, but it never happens in the book, so the “misfits fighting against the society that threw them out� concept never really comes into play.
It’s also really hard to blame the Commonwealth for removing these people from society; with one possible exception, they’ve all committed serious crimes, and I saw very little remorse for their actions. Yes, they remember what they did to end up on the Charles Manson, but that’s about the extent of it. These are likely seriously mentally ill people, yet instead of being cared for as we would hope an advanced civilization –you’d think that by the time we discover interstellar travel, we’ll have figured out how to cure these sorts of illnesses � they’re sent out along with a group of other people just as disturbed as they are, to be cannon fodder against what many believe is an indestructible ship.
As I said at the start, if the answers about the ship called Faith had been interesting enough, I could have forgiven a lot of the above. But it doesn’t. I won’t give it away, but I found the way the book ended to be highly unsatisfying, leaving me with a “I went through all those pages for that?� sort of feeling.
We sort of have an unwritten rule here at , we don’t write negative reviews of the books we encounter but don’t care for. I know in my explorations of free Kindle books I’ve discovered many that weren’t even worth that price, but I haven’t sat down to review all of those. However, we’ve decided that we’re going to review this one, as a way of warning people not to waste their money on it.
I really wanted to like this book. Really, I did. I plodded along until the end, hoping that the answer to the riddle would end up being worth all the difficulty of reading it. Unfortunately, it didn’t, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Faith by John Love had a lot of promise for a science fiction fan. Futuristic technology, alien cultures, and a ship � named Faith by the aliens that first encountered it � that attacks planets for a reason no one can determine. In order to combat Faith, the Commonwealth created the Outsiders, ships with technology never before seen, crewed by the outcast of society. If any ship can defeat Faith, the Outsiders can.
Unfortunately, the negatives in this book far outweigh the positives. For example, the ship we follow is named the Charles Manson. The crew are not just misfits, they’re unlovable misfits. It’s all but impossible to create any sort of emotional connection with these characters. When one of them suicides on the bridge, the commander leaves his blood and brains on his consoles. In another scene, when the Commander is trying to return to his ship through a demonstration at the starport, one of his crew shoots and kills a civilian official, and the Commander does nothing about it. Faith (or perhaps the author) also seems to have a fascination with� well� excrement. In at least two scenes I can think of off the top of my head, the mysterious enemy ship dumps this� stuff on its opponents.
The Outsiders are run by an arm of the Commonwealth that’s only known as the Department of Administrative Affairs, a mysterious group who only communicates by voice, and through archaic stand microphones on the bridge of each Outsider. The officer in command of the ships are called “Commander,� because it’s the Department that’s the real Captain. At one point in the book it looks like the crew of the Charles Manson might actually start a fight against this regime, but it never happens in the book, so the “misfits fighting against the society that threw them out� concept never really comes into play.
It’s also really hard to blame the Commonwealth for removing these people from society; with one possible exception, they’ve all committed serious crimes, and I saw very little remorse for their actions. Yes, they remember what they did to end up on the Charles Manson, but that’s about the extent of it. These are likely seriously mentally ill people, yet instead of being cared for as we would hope an advanced civilization –you’d think that by the time we discover interstellar travel, we’ll have figured out how to cure these sorts of illnesses � they’re sent out along with a group of other people just as disturbed as they are, to be cannon fodder against what many believe is an indestructible ship.
As I said at the start, if the answers about the ship called Faith had been interesting enough, I could have forgiven a lot of the above. But it doesn’t. I won’t give it away, but I found the way the book ended to be highly unsatisfying, leaving me with a “I went through all those pages for that?� sort of feeling.
We sort of have an unwritten rule here at , we don’t write negative reviews of the books we encounter but don’t care for. I know in my explorations of free Kindle books I’ve discovered many that weren’t even worth that price, but I haven’t sat down to review all of those. However, we’ve decided that we’re going to review this one, as a way of warning people not to waste their money on it.
April 15, 2019
the majority of the novel Faith is one big space battle between an "Outsider"-class military spaceship (crewed by psychopaths, sociopaths, and other square pegs) and a mysterious, perhaps eternal spaceship dubbed "Faith" (crewed by beings unknown). the elusive Faith visits the galaxy from time to time and seems to have as its goal the shutting down of starfaring civilizations undergoing rapid expansion. despite a lifetime as a devout nerd who has read many a battle in space, the huge amount of time this book devoted to one lengthy space battle was still a first for me. it's practically the whole book. and it was awesome!
Faith has other things on its mind besides space battles. it's an unusual sort of adventure - partly because of its strange, often unsympathetic cast, but mainly because its intent is to explore Big Ideas About Humanity. can we survive on our own, as solitary beings, even when in the company of others? is being a maverick who exults in their outsider status a questionable goal? do we define ourselves by what we are opposed to - and is that a successful strategy for living? what is "we" and what does "us vs. them" really mean? and what does civilization actually amount to in the grand scheme of things? the novel's foci reminded me of Grant Morrison and a little bit of .
Faith has its flaws, one of them a fairly deep one. John Love is a smart, ambitious, and often quirky writer, but in his zeal to give his novel a literary sheen he often overreaches himself - and so we have many descriptions that are head-scratching rather than interesting (e.g. a sky described as looking like the inside of a mouth streaked with mucous... huh?). there is an off-putting obsession with feces and elimination which leads to some rather groan-worthy analogies. I can overlook those flaws with an exasperated sigh, but it is impossible to overlook the fact that almost the entire first third of the book describes a drive from a home to a spaceport. there was tension on the drive, and some characterization, but in the end it was all so pointless.
but this is still a good book, well-worth the effort of slogging through that first third. it has been aptly described as "Moby Dick in space" and there are certainly some intriguing parallels there. and the ending does not disappoint. I gasped in surprise when finding out the true nature of Faith. and it was all right there in front of me! good one, John Love.
here is a larger image of the cover, which I think is fantastic:
it is also an obscure clue to the mystery - and to the nature of the universe itself! at least according to Faith.
Faith has other things on its mind besides space battles. it's an unusual sort of adventure - partly because of its strange, often unsympathetic cast, but mainly because its intent is to explore Big Ideas About Humanity. can we survive on our own, as solitary beings, even when in the company of others? is being a maverick who exults in their outsider status a questionable goal? do we define ourselves by what we are opposed to - and is that a successful strategy for living? what is "we" and what does "us vs. them" really mean? and what does civilization actually amount to in the grand scheme of things? the novel's foci reminded me of Grant Morrison and a little bit of .
Faith has its flaws, one of them a fairly deep one. John Love is a smart, ambitious, and often quirky writer, but in his zeal to give his novel a literary sheen he often overreaches himself - and so we have many descriptions that are head-scratching rather than interesting (e.g. a sky described as looking like the inside of a mouth streaked with mucous... huh?). there is an off-putting obsession with feces and elimination which leads to some rather groan-worthy analogies. I can overlook those flaws with an exasperated sigh, but it is impossible to overlook the fact that almost the entire first third of the book describes a drive from a home to a spaceport. there was tension on the drive, and some characterization, but in the end it was all so pointless.
but this is still a good book, well-worth the effort of slogging through that first third. it has been aptly described as "Moby Dick in space" and there are certainly some intriguing parallels there. and the ending does not disappoint. I gasped in surprise when finding out the true nature of Faith. and it was all right there in front of me! good one, John Love.
here is a larger image of the cover, which I think is fantastic:
it is also an obscure clue to the mystery - and to the nature of the universe itself! at least according to Faith.
March 17, 2012
I've been reading so much fantasy as of late that I was starting to wonder if I lost my taste for good sci-fi. The last few I tried to pick up didn't sit well with me at all, and I had high hopes for this one based on some reviews.
The bad: it starts out slow, and, frankly, kind of ridiculous. There's good concepts about this mysterious ship that essentially made a civilization regress centuries with how soundly it defeated them, and the ship, known as Faith to those in the system, is back. We have some strange races around, and we have a class of ship that operate outside of the realm of the system government, all of which are named after serial killers. This story revolves mostly around the crew of the Charles Manson, who believe they have the capability to defeat and destroy Faith.
What follows, after nearly 100 pages of setup (setup that can get awfully tiring) comes a simply awesome, very exciting battle between two massive spaceships nearly the rest of the way through. It's tactical, it's psychological, nothing at all happens the way you'd expect, and it becomes very philosophical at times, and it rarely lets up on the gas the entire time. I kept waiting to see the climax of the battle to come and to come, and it just rewarded me with more action.
It's not a traditional sci-fi space opera, even though it hits all those chords perfectly. It was a great read because it scratched my specific sci-fi itch, but it was also a great read because it was so unexpected in so many ways. I can't say for sure that it broke a lot of new ground, but it felt fresh and different, and that meant something for me.
This book definitely lived up to the hype for me. Glad I grabbed it when I did, and I'm glad I stuck with it. If this is your style, I definitely recommend it.
The bad: it starts out slow, and, frankly, kind of ridiculous. There's good concepts about this mysterious ship that essentially made a civilization regress centuries with how soundly it defeated them, and the ship, known as Faith to those in the system, is back. We have some strange races around, and we have a class of ship that operate outside of the realm of the system government, all of which are named after serial killers. This story revolves mostly around the crew of the Charles Manson, who believe they have the capability to defeat and destroy Faith.
What follows, after nearly 100 pages of setup (setup that can get awfully tiring) comes a simply awesome, very exciting battle between two massive spaceships nearly the rest of the way through. It's tactical, it's psychological, nothing at all happens the way you'd expect, and it becomes very philosophical at times, and it rarely lets up on the gas the entire time. I kept waiting to see the climax of the battle to come and to come, and it just rewarded me with more action.
It's not a traditional sci-fi space opera, even though it hits all those chords perfectly. It was a great read because it scratched my specific sci-fi itch, but it was also a great read because it was so unexpected in so many ways. I can't say for sure that it broke a lot of new ground, but it felt fresh and different, and that meant something for me.
This book definitely lived up to the hype for me. Glad I grabbed it when I did, and I'm glad I stuck with it. If this is your style, I definitely recommend it.
September 6, 2021
A unique story even for science fiction. It is a military science fiction story, but the way the plot goes will definitely play with your head. Many readers enjoy trying to determine in what direction the plot will go. Don't try it, (but you will if you decide). Each character who is a member of the ship "Charles Manson" is...well... insane but they are geniuses. The book promo goes like this:
==Faith. Moby Dick meets Duel in John Love's...==
No, not even close.
As for the hard science you have:
* Realistic aliens, one species are asexual they reproduce by pathogenesis. Another alien species is a herbivore and are the dominant species on a planet of carnivores.
* Unique Weapons, as mentioned in other blog summaries every author wants to distinguish themselves. The same goes for FTL drives.
Social sciences:
* Social deviants due to childhood abuse independent of their background. They are the ultimate weapon. It reminds me of my upbringing. Interesting how the government uses these individuals as their best fighters and gives them the best weapons. They are invincible.
It is one of these books one may love to hate. It starts off good and then towards the end into the philosophical La-La land. If you thought the concept of Gaia is bad, think of the Universe as a living entity. Read at the risk of being delighted or extremely disillusioned.
==Faith. Moby Dick meets Duel in John Love's...==
No, not even close.
As for the hard science you have:
* Realistic aliens, one species are asexual they reproduce by pathogenesis. Another alien species is a herbivore and are the dominant species on a planet of carnivores.
* Unique Weapons, as mentioned in other blog summaries every author wants to distinguish themselves. The same goes for FTL drives.
Social sciences:
* Social deviants due to childhood abuse independent of their background. They are the ultimate weapon. It reminds me of my upbringing. Interesting how the government uses these individuals as their best fighters and gives them the best weapons. They are invincible.
It is one of these books one may love to hate. It starts off good and then towards the end into the philosophical La-La land. If you thought the concept of Gaia is bad, think of the Universe as a living entity. Read at the risk of being delighted or extremely disillusioned.
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