Review: Rx - Episode 1: The Blackouts
Aug. 21st, 2012 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseI'm a fan of Robert Brockway, Word Puncher and the rest of the crew over at Cracked, so when he announced via his column that he had written a sci-fi story and was releasing it as a serial novel, I was intrigued. Especially so as he'd written several different columns on science fiction in general that I'd enjoyed very much. So it wasn't difficult to plonk down a couple of bucks to try out the first installment of his novel.
Unfortunately, while I can't say my expectations were high for a columnist whose specialty is interesting factoids interspersed with dick jokes, I also can't say that episode 1 of Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity exceeded them, either. Brockway's world of culturally-sanctioned junkies and nanotech and fights staged throughout history thanks to time-travel gas is intriguing, but feels frustratingly incomplete despite numerous info-dumps along the way; there are interesting pieces of this world scattered throughout the narrative, but they never quite cohere into a whole sense of place. Similarly, none of the characters manage to be three- (or in some cases, even two-) dimensional; the most intriguing of them is probably Red, but even he seems to be little more than a blank canvas upon which to project whatever drug effect he's currently under. (A little self-awareness on Red's part with regards to that exact blankness does make for an interesting bit of character development, but it does little to illuminate why, for instance, his supposed ex might have been attracted to him in the first place.) And some more editing would've helped as well; there are a couple of puzzling continuity errors that a beta-reader should have caught.
It might come as a surprise, then, that this episode's best asset is its frenetic pacing - it's a quick read and the momentum of the plot carries you along even as you occasionally wish that you could slow down and get a better idea of what, exactly, it is you're rushing past. With a little more polish, this could be a serviceable sci-fi thriller; with a lot more polish, it could be an outright fascinating world. This particular execution, however, feels more like a bad drug trip than an actual exploration. C-
Unfortunately, while I can't say my expectations were high for a columnist whose specialty is interesting factoids interspersed with dick jokes, I also can't say that episode 1 of Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity exceeded them, either. Brockway's world of culturally-sanctioned junkies and nanotech and fights staged throughout history thanks to time-travel gas is intriguing, but feels frustratingly incomplete despite numerous info-dumps along the way; there are interesting pieces of this world scattered throughout the narrative, but they never quite cohere into a whole sense of place. Similarly, none of the characters manage to be three- (or in some cases, even two-) dimensional; the most intriguing of them is probably Red, but even he seems to be little more than a blank canvas upon which to project whatever drug effect he's currently under. (A little self-awareness on Red's part with regards to that exact blankness does make for an interesting bit of character development, but it does little to illuminate why, for instance, his supposed ex might have been attracted to him in the first place.) And some more editing would've helped as well; there are a couple of puzzling continuity errors that a beta-reader should have caught.
It might come as a surprise, then, that this episode's best asset is its frenetic pacing - it's a quick read and the momentum of the plot carries you along even as you occasionally wish that you could slow down and get a better idea of what, exactly, it is you're rushing past. With a little more polish, this could be a serviceable sci-fi thriller; with a lot more polish, it could be an outright fascinating world. This particular execution, however, feels more like a bad drug trip than an actual exploration. C-
