John Dreese

Red Hope's storyline centers on photos taken by the Mars Rover which seemingly shows human-like fossils, along with stone tablets engraved with what appears to be some form of written language. A team of astronauts is formed and, with the help of a revutionary new rocket engjne developed by the company owned by one of the major characters, a mission is launched to investigate the discovery.

Red Hope unfortunately didn't deliver on its promising premise. The story lacked any real suspense and there was little in the storyline to keep me interested. I listened to the audiobook and I often had to rewind because my attention kept drifting away from the book.

One of the major issues is that the story rushed through or glossed over seemingly significant moments. A relationship developed in the story between two characters. Without giving too much away, a tragic event occurs to one person and the other's reaction felt very extreme. I guess readers were to understand that the relationship had gotten serious, but we never actually got to witness the relationship develop, so the whole thing was just kinda hard to swallow. Similarly, significance of the discovery on Mars is only explained in the final chapter, and was done so very quickly, because the book ends in a cliffhanger. One particular artifact that was discovered is never explained. Presumably, because it will be part of the second book I the series, Blue Hope.

I also thought the characters were not very interesting, and their demeanors did not fit their roles. The NASA director frequently spoke to the astronauts during the mission. Is that realistic? Wouldn't mission control be the ones speaking to astronauts during a mission? It was these types of things that chipped away at the realism of the story.

I was hoping to enjoy this, but I did read some reviews that gave me pause and, for me at least, those reviews were correct.… (mehr)