4-3-18 book review- Thunderbird

Thunderbird by Jack McDevitt
Don't bother slogging through this one.
I am so disappointed in this book. Wish I had read the reviews on goodreads before I picked it up.
I kept expecting something to happen. It didn't.
The plot makes it sound like it's going to be interesting, a Gate is found on an Indian Reservation. The Indians decide to manage it themselves without the help of the government.
Right about there it falls apart. First the government tries to take control, and we have an oil pipeline like situation. luckily we don't see that part in the book, we only hear about it through flashbacks.
Then there is a whole sub plot about an alien invisible wind creature following some of their explorers back through the Gate. The whole plot twist at the end is nonsense. The whole political fight about who's going to do what through the Gate is nonsense.

One plot has a bunch of Indians wanting to move to the Eden like planet and settle there, potentially pushing out another intelligent species. And one of the other Indian characters has to point out how much like colonisation this would be. So much Nonsense. I mean seriously, they've barely had time to explore the new Eden like world and suddenly most of a tribe wants to move to it and push out the existing people. And in the meantime they have no idea if they can even eat any of the food there or grow their own crops there and they haven't watched it for a full year so they have no idea what the weather is like during other parts of the year. But for some reason they decide it's going to be called Eden and everybody wants to move there. Nonsense.

So much of this book made no sense whatsoever. So many of the characters were basic cardboard cutouts and didn't seem to know what to do with themselves. The characters were bland and angsty for chapter after chapter without adequately explained reasons and no resolution.

It's almost like the author wanted to write something about events on a reservation and tie it to the oil pipeline protests and eminent domain in some subtle way. But kinda failed.

I literally was three-quarters of the way done before anything interesting actually happened.

This author used to be pretty good, he had some good ideas and he had some imaginative plots. At this point he seems to be going through the motion of writing a book but forgetting to actually put anything interesting in it. I believe the editor should have cut out over half of this book as the reader would not have missed it at all.
I am sad that I paid money for this. I only finished it because I was hoping it would have a decent plot twist or tie everything together nicely at the end.

It's been snowing all day here in Green Bay, Wisconsin while I'm on this business trip. They called off school early and my trainees had to go manage that mess. So I went ahead and finished this book while at lunch.
Here is the view from my hotel...