Tensy (bookdoyen)'s Reviews > The Blue, Beautiful World

Lord's novels, this being the third in a series, while exhibiting her strong prose style all suffer from the same problems. Lack of in-depth character development, pacing and a confusing number of characters (with multiple names, why?). This book started well picking up on Rafi/Owen/Jon's story (yeah, the multiple names issue and thank you for the glossary which I bookmarked and referred to frequently), where he has morphed from a sports nexus to a music idol on Earth, using technology that can alter face recognition. Unusual shift, but I was willing to go along. If you have not read the previous novels, you will probably get totally lost in this one. There are political machinations afoot, with assasination attempts and multiple players (better described in the previous novels) vying for first contact/control over the humans on Earth. Then the plot swerves to five students in their 20s selected to be part of a diplomatic group and given an assignment to create scenarios for first contact. This section totally dragged for me. Lord has some really great ideas in this series, but she has problems with the structure and pacing of the story and therefore one is left wanting on several levels which is reflected in the overall low ratings on Goodreads. She tries to tackle too many ideas in too short a novel with rushed wrap-up endings, where events do not feel adequately developed.