Official Review: The Hidden Planet by Rob Chicken

[Ursula_Minor]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Hidden Planet" by Rob Chicken.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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The Hidden Planet, by Rob Chicken, is a story of space exploration. The American Space Agency has discovered a planet on the opposite side of our sun, and always out of view. We join the narrative just as two young recruits from Britain are exported to the US to embark on a rescue mission: one ship has already gone out in search of the hidden planet, but has not returned.

Chicken's text sticks to golden-age sci-fi genre conventions. At the centre of the text, more than any character or plot line, is a fascination with both technology and with new frontiers. Stylistically, Chicken mimics the same class of text: the language is sparse, as technical as possible, and the story is grounded by references to environmental and technological challenges. Style is one of this text's greatest strengths, for those exact reasons.

Character and plot, however, suffer. The narrative moves between multiple points of view in a manner that is not well executed: while some characters have a developed voice and back story, others (generally the female characters) read very flat and are unconvincing. Additionally, while the shift in narrative perspective might have been interesting, in its current form it distracts from the narrative arc, and makes a very simple story harder to follow.

Chicken's writing is, at the level of grammar, very good. Errors seldom occur, but are perhaps more distracting because of this. Additionally, the narrative voice is inconsistent inside of the world that Chicken builds. Specifically, the narrative moves between characters coded as American and British, but does not maintain consistency between characters and language signifiers. American characters, for example, use British colloquialisms in a context that appears to be serious, rather than jokey. Narrative stakes, too, are built up unconvincingly: I didn't feel as if anything were seriously at stake until I reached page 54 of 84, which made it difficult to invest in as a reader.

Rob Chicken's The Hidden Planet has an ideal reader: one who enjoys epic space journeys; who wept a little at the prom dance scene at the end of Contagion, and a little more when Firefly was cancelled. If you read Philip K. Dick's UBIK without once wondering when the narrative would start getting to the point, you'll probably enjoy this text. It doesn't, however, do anything especially exciting or new: the text relies on tropes, and tells a familiar story without doing so in a manner that is especially interesting. For this reason, I rate it 2 out of 4.

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The Hidden Planet
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Like Ursula_Minor's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Lee Stone]

A book about Outer Space reviewed by a constellation! Almost.

Exceptionally well written and pointed. The author will definitely benefit, as will all prospective reviewers.

[Ursula_Minor]

Oh, thanks! This one was a bit more difficult to write than others. I'm not even sure why! But: I'm glad that it seems useful!

[bluemel4]

Great critique. This book is not for me, but the review is very well done.

[zeldas_lullaby]

Great review! I'm only vaguely familiar with all of those references in the last paragraph, so I'm guessing that this book isn't for me! (Sci-fi has never been my thing.) I think that was a good way, though, to alert people who do follow those TV shows and authors, that this book is for them.

[Ursula_Minor]

Hmmm. I picked those references because they're all a bit conservative... but I also thought people would know them! I'll keep that in mind in the future-- I always aim to be as clear as possible!

[zeldas_lullaby]

Oh, no, I'm sorry, it isn't you. I almost never watch TV, and I've never read anything sci-fi.

[Ursula_Minor]

Oh! Okay, that makes sense! I basically only watch SciFi TV (with a few exceptions, though most of those are still somewhere near fantasy/speculative fiction), so have a hard time with references outside of that genre, but also knowing what people with more conventional tastes are watching. Do you have a favourite movie? (sorry, I'm curious about the not watching TV thing. I know that people do it, but my household has a minor and a major TV watcher in it, so I'm unfamiliar with that particular lifestyle choice!)

[zeldas_lullaby]

Well, I have focus issues that make it hard for me to sit through a show. (Movies are even harder to get through!) I don't fully understand why it happened, 'cause I used to watch TV all the time!! I could watch it for hours! Not anymore. All I watch is "background" that doesn't require my focus, like Frasier reruns, which I've seen a million times, so I know the storylines, and therefore don't have to pay close attention. More background: HGTV, the Golden Girls, etc. But it's really hard to watch a new episode of anything. Your guess as to why is as good as mine!!