V: The Second Generation by Kenneth Johnson
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Book Reviews of V: The Second Generation
Book Review: The most masochistic thing I've ever done: finish this book
Summary: 1 Stars
[Mild spoilers]
Huge disappointment and truly awful.
It doesn't bother me that this book picks up after the first miniseries. I don't dislike The Final Battle. The production value had gone inexplicably down considering how successful the first miniseries was, and I think the ending with Elizabeth is too deus ex machina. (I would rather have seen John continue to argue with Diana that they'd lost and it's time to go.) I loathed the TV series. So that's easy for me to ignore. I understand Kenneth Johnson picking up where he did because he had creative differences with people working on Final Battle and had his credit changed from Kenneth Johnson to a pseudonym, Lillian Weezer. (He's still credited with his real name as creator of the series.)
I was really looking forward to The Second Generation. I love V and The Final Battle, and I wanted to see what the *creator* would do with the story. Now I have to ignore this book like I do the TV series of V. It's a little too similar to what George Lucas did to Star Wars with those horrible prequels. (And I disagree with people who say Johnson's and Lucas' stories are theirs to do with what they choose. No. They have become our stories. Lucas and Johnson break the storytelling contracts they made with us, their audiences, when they continue their tales in such absurd ways that ring false.)
I re-watched the first miniseries before reading this book so I'd know where the characters were story-wise. I bet Kenneth Johnson didn't do that. Robin Maxwell is nowhere to be found despite the first series ending with hints that she's pregnant with a Visitor's child. Julie and Donovan don't even show up until around page 130! They're more like supporting characters...and just as one-dimensional as all the other characters.
I agree so much with the other negative reviews here that I don't have much to add: cardboard characters you don't care about, plot holes, amateurish.
The reason I decided to add my review is Johnson's bigotry towards fat people. Fat=evil to Johnson. Not only is that bigoted, it's lazy writing. "Oh, this is a bad character. How will I describe their physique? Fat." Again and again. I think Blue is the only large character who is not a jerk, and I suspect it's because he's black. In fact, Johnson describes Blue as "strong" more than "fat." Similarly, all of the good characters are good-looking. How very creative...
Johnson obviously has no idea what a 250-pound woman looks like, as he describes the wrestler as some hideously and enormously fat monster. I wish he'd Google the BMI project and get some idea of what different weights actually look like, not just what Hollywood erroneously guesses them to look like.
This book is a slow and torturous read because it's boring and his writing does not flow. The first 150 and last 50 pages were drudgery. The rest flowed somewhat better, but it's still terrible not to care about any of the characters, especially considering how much I adore Julie and Donovan from the first two miniseries.
One thing I loved about the original two TV movies and is nowhere to be found here is how Julie and Donovan are co-leaders of the Resistance. Sure, Donovan is broken in this book, but I disagree with the decision to write him that way, on so many levels.
Basically this book is a slight variation of Final Battle that is worse storytelling and makes little sense. It's also not entertaining in the least.
Book Review: Baloney
Summary: 1 Stars
Call me a nerd, but this writer should do cursory Google search to see the gaps in his thinking.
There is roughly 326 million cubic miles (1.34 billion cubic km) of water on the Earth. The original aliens brought 50 motherships that were about 1 mile in diameter each. Individual ships could hold, at maximum, 1/20th of a cubic mile of water (assuming space needed for cargo holds, shuttle bays, engines, quarters and whatnot). Even if the aliens sent an extra MILLION ships (and that's a HUGE exaggeration) to the Earth after the original first series, they would ONLY have taken 50,000 cubic miles of water on that visit alone. While this is, indeed, a lot of water and would have caused notable climate shifts, it would not be more than a drop in the bucket in comparison to the rest of the oceans.
Even with the number of motherships I allow for, the Sirians (Visitors) would need 6,520 trips to haul ALL of it back to their star system. At a 17 year round trip, it would take 55,400 years just to take HALF of the water on Earth. Then one has to consider: how can the visitors do without so many ships while at war? Presumably a million ships, with--say--a crew of 20,000 each (total of 20 billion people) would be quite useful in their war against the "bug" aliens.
Lastly: why come to the Earth and take our water? Thousands of time MORE water, as well as EVERY mineral in the universe, awaits the visitors in other areas of the solar system, that is FAR easier to reach, without having to deal with the troublesome humans. Presumably any alien with the ability to traverse the cosmos would have the intelligence and technology to reach the waters & minerals on Titan, Europa, Mars and the comets far more easily than coming to this tenuous rock.