This is the end

Cosmonaut Keep was... eh. The guy had some really good ideas, but he didn't unveil them until hella late, and by the time he did I kind of feel like maybe I should have known about it earlier. Mostly because earlier was when I was confused about what was going on, but now that he's talking about it, I kind of already figured it out, or just don't care anymore.

The book certainly does pick up in the latter have, and stuff does actually start to happen, but it's never really enough. It's like this one time, I sat around with my friend, and we came up with the coolest sci-fi story ever. We worked out the protagonists, the antagonists, the climax, the resolution, all that. But we never actually published it. That's what I feel like this was: the author telling me about a really cool story, but not actually telling me the story.

And I feel like some (many) things were a little (a lot) contrived. Like when Salasso gets into the disagreement with his dinosaur pals, so they go talk to the kraken. That was an entire 10 page section that could have been cut. It didn't add anything. Sure, we get more veiled references about “gods” and the saurs actually having come from earth, but once again, these are things we already kinda figured out, or don't really care about anymore.

The book didn't have any head slapping, “oh my God!” moments either. Matt would be going on and on about some deep mystery that he's very much obsessed over, and my eyes glaze a little and I just say, “uh... ok. I don't get why that bugs you.”

I guess that's how I ultimately feel. The book wasn't horrible, and not the worst thing I've ever read, but it certainly felt clumsy and poorly written. I was expecting to see the reason why this guy won the grammy, and the tony, and the best day time TV supporting actor award, but I didn't. And I kind of don't really feel like going onto the next books to see if they know why.

Oh, before I forget, there's the issue of all the pot in the book. Why? What purpose did it serve? And it's not that I have an ax to grind against pot, I could care less. It's about as consequential to me as to whether or not you use single or two ply, but this guy was hella obsessed with it, but I don't see what it actually added. And the pilot smoking pot on the station? Really? ExSqueeze me? Baking Powder? The US government does have an ax to grind with smoking pot. Bigass time. They pretty much wouldn't let her fly anymore if she tested positive. Bah. Whatever. This guy gets jolly over an excess of pot references for no good reason, so let him have at it. It fits with the rest of the book being clumsy, etc.

And the love interests. I felt kind of blindsided by it. Especially the bit with Lydia. I'm sure it had to have been somewhere else, but hell if I find it. All of a sudden, Gregor's got two babes, and one of them is totally ok with three ways. And the line about Elizabeth “doing the most surprising thing with her tongue and foreskin” was the grossest line I've ever read in a book ever. I read it 3 times. Twice to make sure I'd read, and again out loud to make sure I wasn't fuckin with myself. Mostly, this is how I feel like the sex scenes were handled in this book: imaging you're on a beach. It's a cool, windy day, but the sun is out, shining brightly. The waves are lapping gently against the shore, and you can see dolphins playing in the distance. Oh look, there are two people doing it! Man, they are really going at it! I think they might want to slow down. They might pull a muscle or slip a disc.

That's how I felt.