Submitted by Rick Joslin (Oct 27, 2009)

I am in the midst of listening to Pandora's Star as an audiobook. I agree with most of what your reviewer wrote, but especially with the statement that a dramatis personae (or list of characters) would be very useful. In fact, I came upon this site looking for such a list, so far unsuccessfully. I've gotten so lost occasionally that I had to go back a few chapters to re-orient myself to which characters I was currently reading about. The author's website has a "cast of characters" for another of his books/series; maybe such a document will be forthcoming for Pandora's Star. The story itself is very compelling, at least so far. R. Joslin

I found Pandora's Star far too long and in dire need of some stricter editing. There were whole sub-plots that seemed unnecessary and did nothing to further the story or even really flesh out the universe, where I found myself doggedly ploughing through just trying to make it to the next interesting/important part. Even the important parts could have been tightened considerably, with many paragraphs of needless detail just getting in the way and making it a labourious read. It is a good story ruined by a self-indulgent author whose prose should have been massively pruned by his editors, but wasn't. The book could easily have been 1/2 or 2/3 the size, and much better.