★★★☆☆ Average
(SF Adventure) Sahar makes a living in Titan gathering the products “Boppers” leave, but she joins a Titan-adapted person to hunt for a very special artifact, despite the danger from pirates. (4,224 words; Time: 14m)
"Gubbinal," by Lavie Tidhar [bio] (edited by Neil Clarke), appeared in Clarkesworld issue 142, published on July 1, 2018.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Pro: Sahar has her adventure, lives to tell the tale, and even gets paid for it. Even better: if the monolith has any real value, she seems to have found it.
Con: I found the world too hard to believe in. The boppers made no sense, nor did the ermines. Titan is really too cold for very active life unless it’s nuclear powered.
There seemed to be lots of world building with very little story in it. Perhaps a novel would do it better justice.
There are small errors that are grating. For example, Saturn does not rise or set as seen from Titan.
Other Reviews: Search Web, Browse Review Sites (Issue 142)
Lavie Tidhar Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Con: I found the world too hard to believe in. The boppers made no sense, nor did the ermines. Titan is really too cold for very active life unless it’s nuclear powered.
There seemed to be lots of world building with very little story in it. Perhaps a novel would do it better justice.
There are small errors that are grating. For example, Saturn does not rise or set as seen from Titan.
Other Reviews: Search Web, Browse Review Sites (Issue 142)
Lavie Tidhar Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
The fact that the story is a setup for a bad pun is also kind of annoying.
ReplyDeleteI completely missed that!
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