What if China convinced
the world that the U.S. never landed on the moon? What would America
do? Nothing? Let one of man’s greatest achievements simply be erased?
Moon Hoax, is a tale of seemingly doing the impossible, sending an American back to the moon today. China claims the moon landings never happened and that they have proof. Losing worldwide prestige is not an option for the United States. Peter Novak, son of a moonwalker, is selected to fly the dangerous secret mission to the moon and enlists a former space rival as his unlikely co-pilot. The two must overcome China's efforts to sabotage the operation and beat the communists to the moon.
America is thrust into a race back to the moon—And this time it's personal.
To start, in compliance with FTC guidelines, I must disclose that I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
Where to start! I found this quite an interesting read with a fairly novel, overall storyline. It had a good balance of story and technical detail about Space/Moon travel and was not too technical for a complete Space novice, like me, to understand. While the author used a lot of acronyms, they felt necessary in the context and were well explained in a way that was not too annoying (I hate books that need a lot of asides just to explain the acronyms so you can keep up with the story). I was surprised at how well it flowed despite the language being rather formal and, at times, stiff throughout. It felt like I was reading a full movie screenplay and script and could have used some editing for a novel, although, as I think the story would make a good movie, perhaps the author could just sell the book as it is as the screenplay!!? At times it felt over-descriptive and could have used some editing down to get rid of a lot of unnecessary words and scene setting to make the storyline a bit more "snappy".
I cringed a bit at the love interest in the middle as it was just all a bit Hollywood and did remind me of the film Armageddon at times. Think Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis and you have the love interest in this novel. In my opinion, this was unnecessary to the novel and I would have preferred less about that and longer sections on the actual time in space.
So at this stage in my review the book is at 4 stars out of 5 so what brought it down one more star.
It could have been the Chinese phrases at the start of the book that were left unexplained! It could have been the fact that the first 14 pages seemed unnecessary technical detail for the novel. It could even have been the fact that I had no idea of the actual time setting of the story until Chapter 4. But all of these I could have forgiven as I really enjoyed the story.
What I could really not forgive happened on page 53. Now I would expect anyone capable of writing a novel to know what the currency used in England is. So when the character, Peter, was jumping in a taxi cab in London to get to Heathrow airport and said "There's an extra 20 Euros if you can get me to the airport before 5a.m.", I cringed. Did you see the mistake, well of course you did, the currency should be GBP and perhaps, being British myself, this inaccuracy niggled at me throughout the whole novel. If this simple fact was wrong, how could I trust the facts listed throughout about Space travel!?
A shame about that as it was quite a good novel and actually gave me a lump in my throat towards the end so should have warranted 4 stars. I guess even 3 is quite generous given this error. So a note to the author, change this in future print runs and your star rating should soar to the Moon (see what I did there, lol).
Where to start! I found this quite an interesting read with a fairly novel, overall storyline. It had a good balance of story and technical detail about Space/Moon travel and was not too technical for a complete Space novice, like me, to understand. While the author used a lot of acronyms, they felt necessary in the context and were well explained in a way that was not too annoying (I hate books that need a lot of asides just to explain the acronyms so you can keep up with the story). I was surprised at how well it flowed despite the language being rather formal and, at times, stiff throughout. It felt like I was reading a full movie screenplay and script and could have used some editing for a novel, although, as I think the story would make a good movie, perhaps the author could just sell the book as it is as the screenplay!!? At times it felt over-descriptive and could have used some editing down to get rid of a lot of unnecessary words and scene setting to make the storyline a bit more "snappy".
I cringed a bit at the love interest in the middle as it was just all a bit Hollywood and did remind me of the film Armageddon at times. Think Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis and you have the love interest in this novel. In my opinion, this was unnecessary to the novel and I would have preferred less about that and longer sections on the actual time in space.
So at this stage in my review the book is at 4 stars out of 5 so what brought it down one more star.
It could have been the Chinese phrases at the start of the book that were left unexplained! It could have been the fact that the first 14 pages seemed unnecessary technical detail for the novel. It could even have been the fact that I had no idea of the actual time setting of the story until Chapter 4. But all of these I could have forgiven as I really enjoyed the story.
What I could really not forgive happened on page 53. Now I would expect anyone capable of writing a novel to know what the currency used in England is. So when the character, Peter, was jumping in a taxi cab in London to get to Heathrow airport and said "There's an extra 20 Euros if you can get me to the airport before 5a.m.", I cringed. Did you see the mistake, well of course you did, the currency should be GBP and perhaps, being British myself, this inaccuracy niggled at me throughout the whole novel. If this simple fact was wrong, how could I trust the facts listed throughout about Space travel!?
A shame about that as it was quite a good novel and actually gave me a lump in my throat towards the end so should have warranted 4 stars. I guess even 3 is quite generous given this error. So a note to the author, change this in future print runs and your star rating should soar to the Moon (see what I did there, lol).
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