ARA Review by Chaotic_Reading of The Proximity of Stars

[Chaotic_Reading]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, The Proximity of Stars.]

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1 out of 5 stars

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Set in the near and plausible future, soon after his college graduation, Brian Sunderland’s life becomes a whirlwind. He’s arrested by the military, jumps out of a helicopter, and years later, wakes up on the moon! Meanwhile, his brother finds out he is alive, and sets into action a plan to not only kill Brian, but wipe out the moon, as well.

I really don’t know what to think of this book. It feels like a poorly written space family feud, and I can’t tell if the book is meant to be serious or satire. Each time I turned the page, I couldn’t help but think that the plot was something that was made up as the story progressed. There are weird paragraph breaks, as well as weird use of dialogue. There seems to be a lot of turns of phrase that are very niche, as I didn’t quite understand several of them. Several times I got a sense that the plot just needed a deus ex machina moment to solve the problem at hand, and that’s what the author did.

Then there was the treatment of the main character, Brian. Several times he was down on himself, which I can understand since he woke up missing several years of his life, and being told this information by none other than his grandfather, who he thought was dead. But, everyone else seems to belittle Brian, as well, including the author in some of the rare moments of exposition. Even Brian’s wife, who I have my own thoughts on, would belittle him one moment, and then the next praise him as the best man there ever was.

All of the characters were flat, with no real purpose other than to follow along with where the author was taking the story, which I’m still not sure where that is. Things changed from moment to moment in the book, including Brian being told he is too old for his future wife then being asked why he hasn’t proposed yet; to the grandfather just up and deciding to not only leave his position in the government, but to mysteriously vanish through a portal near the sun.

This book seems to have a ton of really positive reviews, which confuses me, but I will agree on one point that several of the reviews make: The message of peace, love, and equality was fantastic. Despite that, I think the book is poorly written with its weird word usage and made-up-as-we-go plot. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. Because of all of this, I gave this book a one out of five stars.

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