Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime: Breaking Strain

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3395861.html

This was part of a Humble Bundle that I got in 2016 because of various Zelazny-related items. It's an expansion of "Breaking Strain", a 1949 story by Arthur C. Clarke, and the first in a series of six volumes by Preuss featuring the mysterious Sparta, whose memories of her own origin are unclear and unreliable, and gets mixed up with a very weird plot involving the transport of a first edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom to the planet Venus. It started a bit clunky but developed well enough and kept my attention to the end; not Great Literature but a step or two ahead of the pulp stories which it is rooted in.

La primera vez que leí este libro, era una chavita de unos 20 añitos y me encantó. Tenía una protagonista que resuelve un misterio en el espacio, que además sabe perfecto como dar trancazos, como toda una espía; por eso le puse 4 estrellas.
Lo leí otra vez mucho después, y ahora opino que sólo es de 2 estrellas.

The book was described somewhere as sort of PG version of Heinlein's Friday which I liked a lot. Having found out that it was not written by Arthur Clarke - just based on his short story - I was not in high hopes of it being particularly good. Nevertheless I started reading. Surprisingly, the story turned out to be very enjoyable and I can't wait to read the rest of the series.

Very engaging storytelling, but I felt it needed another go through with an editor to tidy up the prose and typesetting.

A story with 3 sub-plots: a woman who's been raised with mental & physical enhancements--now with an erased memory--is on the run (from the Illuminati?); 2 men on a spacecraft have only enough air for one to survive the trip; a rich jerk buys a rare book, just to spite the woman who stole his girlfriend from him. The denouement is almost pretty good--but the tie-ups are decent--but not "pretty good".

Very engaging storytelling, but I felt it needed another go through with an editor to tidy up the prose and typesetting.

Leí este libro por primera vez cuando tenía como 20 años. En ese entonces me gustó.

En el 2018 ó 2019 se me ocurrió escucharlo en inglés, en forma de audiolibro, mientras hacía ejercicio. ¡Y lo odié! Resultó que mi mentecita cuasi-adolescente había editado convenientemente todo un trasfondo romántico de lo más cursi y telenovelero, por no mencionar una buena cantidad de clichés que ahora son básicos para las novelas "Young Adult".
Ahora le pongo sólo dos estrellas.

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I read this book for the first time when I was about 20 years old and I loved it.
Back in 2019, I heard the audiobook version and I hated it! I think my almost teenage mind decided to gloss over the corny romantic backstory and a lot of "Young Adult" clichés; show more hence the two star rating. show less