I’m always on the hunt for good science fiction. And even though dystopian isn’t my jam most of the time, I’m willing to accept it as a tenant of a lot of science fiction. Unfortunately, almost as soon as I started Zoe Routh’s The Olympus Project, I could tell it was going to fall flat.
The Earth has been wrecked by humanity’s irresponsible choices, so now her best scientists and world builders must work with what is left to create habitable cities for the remaining residents. But when the opportunity to put in a bid for a moon project comes up, Gaia Enterprises and its board of directors start selecting and testing candidates for its team. As they go through each phase of screening, the directors must ask themselves, is skill alone the best approach, or should they select candidates who show the most potential? As they whittle down their selections to the primary and secondary team, the question becomes more crucial and the answer could be the project’s undoing–or its making.
Routh did her best to take a somewhat standard idea and make it her own, and I believe she has the pieces for a good story. The rest of her Gaia series may show great development and growth. Unfortunately, her writing didn’t do it justice.
Most of the time I felt like I was being told the story, not shown it. Her writing didn’t evoke much emotion in me, nor did I fall as easily into imagining the world through her words. It ended up feeling fairly one-dimensional to me.
The start of the book was also challenging, more of a movie montage intro than building of the story, in some ways. The first part of the book introduces the reader into a collection of people who are all vying for spots on Gaia’s moon bid team. But Routh introduces more characters than she’ll need for the final team, then tries to follow quite a few of them through the various stages of the selection process, trying to keep the suspense of who will make the team. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. It was easy to tell who was going to make the team and who were throwaway characters, which made the throwaway chapters and bits clutter in the overall story.
Once the team is selected and they move to prototyping and testing their lunar design, the story starts to get interesting and picks up more dimension, though the areas Routh tries to infuse with suspense still don’t quite work out.
I think this would be an entirely different book if the first half or so was condensed, and maybe one main character was pulled out to highlight. With so many characters headlining chapters, it’s hard to fully recognize anyone as a main character, though it is easy to pinpoint a couple supporting characters.
It looks like The Olympus Project is Routh’s first fiction book. I think she might really come into her own as she continues the series. And while I may not be quick to jump into the next book, I think she won’t have too much of a problem capturing an audience.
Reading, writing, living 