weird, nudity ( )

Im not often driven to comment on whati have read but this is the worst book I've read in a long time. With sexual politics similar in tone to the Gor books (which are so execrable that further comment is unnecessary)a thin plot and even thinner characterisation It gives SF and space opera a bad name ( )

This is a fun book. The sexual content might put off some people, but the adventure moves along well. I liked the convoluted bureaucracy. ( )

I didn't finish this. In fact, I gave up before I'd read 100 pages. I have a friend who loved it, so I started willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, despite having heard bad things about it. For the first couple of chapters I was okay, but really, it is badly written and somewhat puerile and I'm not interested in wasting my time. There is too much infodumping, and clumsy infodumping at that. There are too many long and boring job titles that may be meant to point out the cleverness of writing a book about bureaucracy but just made my eyes glaze over. The sexual politics have nothing clever or new about them and seem to me to be nothing more than the juvenile imaginings of a sad little man. So no, I wasn't the least surprised that C. J. is a man. I wonder if he got off on imagining his super-beautiful and perfect heroine in 40% transparent clothing with her one artistically showing pubic hair? Once the mores of Dexta were explained to me in nasty detail, including why Gloria had needed to sleep with 40-odd different people in her first six months, I was rapidly cooling. When a sneak peek at the end, to see if it got any better, showed some bigwig in the corporation arranged "the most extreme forms of abuse Dexta has to offer - physical, sexual, psychological and emotional" in order to get rid of her in the beginning, I realised I didn't need to read any more of this author's sick fantasies. In the hands of a good author, Gloria, Dexta and the mystery (which I didn't even get to reading about beyond the initial introduction) might have been fresh and clever. It wasn't and I most certainly don't consider C. J. Ryan (who the Internet tells me "is the pseudonym of an author who lives and works in Philadelphia. This is his first science fiction novel." - didn't want to be called up on his sick fantasies huh?) to be a good author. This is dreck. Give it a miss. Whoo, I really didn't like this, did I? I'm giving it 2 because Gloria had the potential to have been a good character. And in fact she may be, but I can't take another paragraph of the author. ( )