Book Review: Adam – by J.L. Smith

A husband and wife astronomer team searching for asteroids find a new object beyond the orbit of Saturn which they name Adam. Upon further study, they discover that the object is huge, about a quarter the mass of the moon, and it is on a hyperbolic trajectory, which means it is not orbiting the sun, but came from another star system and will leave ours after its visit. Unfortunately, they calculate that it will come within 81,000 miles of Earth. An object that size so close to earth would have very serious consequences to the present and future earth. And those consequences is what the book Adam is all about.

I read the book quickly and I kept turning the pages, because I am interested in the subject matter. However, I found the writing simple and the story so simplistic, it read like a fairy tale. Every technical concept was oversimplified to the point where it just didn’t ring true. Ok, if this had played in the year 2150, I might have bought into the plot. But it was supposed to be in 2028. No way – it just didn’t seem real.

The writing seemed clumsy. Every teacher of writing conveys that as a writer you should not tell the reader what’s happening, but show the reader. Smith constantly tells. It’s like he is writing a superficial physics book where shallow characters are observed doing stuff. He tries to round out the character by making them loving, warm, intelligent, hardworking, but it just doesn’t work.

So while I kept reading because I was curious about how the plot would develop, in the end it was way too predictable, and it just never seemed real – like a fairy tale.