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Amy's Reviews > Damocles
Damocles
by
by
Amy's review
bookshelves: futuristic, science-fiction, space-travel, 2014-books-read, alien-contact
Jul 25, 2014
bookshelves: futuristic, science-fiction, space-travel, 2014-books-read, alien-contact
Imagine that you're a geek boy whose obsession with comics, roleplaying games, and the possibility of aliens has doomed you forever to a cubicle job monitoring ocean weather. Only, it turns out that when aliens do arrive on the planet that the government seeks you out because of a plan you wrote years ago about how to receive aliens. A geeky social misfit has suddenly become the most important person on the planet ... other than the Earthers who have newly arrived ... in the exact spot you predicted that they might.
This book stands apart from many first-contact books because of the lovable alien geek boy, Loul, and the intimate friendship that he builds with Meg as the Earthers and Didetos try to communicate with each other. The understanding isn't instant, but it's persistent. And even though the Didetos are short, stout, and loud with brown teeth, you hope that Meg will insist on Loul coming with them when they leave the planet.
The thing is that so much is still left in question at the end of the book. How did the Earthers receive the message that human DNA had been seeded throughout the galaxy and where to look? And who were the sea gods from the Didetos' myths? I'm still curious and I still want more at book's end. But I want more only if I can also have Loul in a sequel.
This book stands apart from many first-contact books because of the lovable alien geek boy, Loul, and the intimate friendship that he builds with Meg as the Earthers and Didetos try to communicate with each other. The understanding isn't instant, but it's persistent. And even though the Didetos are short, stout, and loud with brown teeth, you hope that Meg will insist on Loul coming with them when they leave the planet.
The thing is that so much is still left in question at the end of the book. How did the Earthers receive the message that human DNA had been seeded throughout the galaxy and where to look? And who were the sea gods from the Didetos' myths? I'm still curious and I still want more at book's end. But I want more only if I can also have Loul in a sequel.
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Quotes Amy Liked
“the gate really is inside each of us. Each of us has a door to walk through, maybe a thousand, and if we don’t walk through them, we aren’t alive. We aren’t human until we walk through that gate regardless of what’s on the other side.”
― Damocles
― Damocles
Reading Progress
July 25, 2014
–
Started Reading
July 25, 2014
– Shelved
July 25, 2014
– Shelved as:
to-read
July 25, 2014
– Shelved as:
futuristic
July 25, 2014
– Shelved as:
science-fiction
July 25, 2014
– Shelved as:
space-travel
July 25, 2014
–
0.87%
"Ah. Great writing style. Loving it so far. This one was a temporary freebie on amazon. Seems it's going to be a real treasure."
page
3
July 25, 2014
–
43.0%
"I don't need to have to go through the actual agonies of learning an alien language to get the idea. A large part of the language struggle would be best left out to keep me turning the pages."
July 26, 2014
–
55.0%
"A modern alien world with newscasts and Internet would surely have picture dictionaries and intensive language courses. And with the Earthers having a language-learning machine, why is their vocabulary database still so limited?"
July 27, 2014
– Shelved as:
2014-books-read
July 27, 2014
– Shelved as:
alien-contact
July 27, 2014
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-2 of 2 (2 new)
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Daniel wrote: "There are unanswered questions. I imagined that the Sea Gods, or whoever they actually were, were the ones that sent the message and built the temples. It just took a billion years for the message ..."It is rare to find real characters like these, isn't it? People are far more interesting that how they're portrayed in so many books. It was nice re-reading this review and remembering how pleasant it was to read this book. If you read anything else by her, let me know.
I enjoyed your review, it reminded me of the characters in this story who made this a book a cut-above most, if not all, of the sci-fi that I've read to-date.