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Metamorphosis | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Jack McKinney | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Robotech: Third Generation | Genesis, Battle Cry, Homecoming, Battlehymn, Force of Arms, Doomsday, Southern Cross, Metal Fire, The Final Nightmare, Invid Invasion, Metamorphosis, Symphony of Light, The Devil's Hand, Dark Powers, Death Dance, World Killers, Rubicon, The End of the Circle | ||
The plot for the second book of the third generation is remarkably simple. Scott Bernard and his team of irregulars find some new equipment, take on a new teammember who looks remarkably like Scott's dead love but is really an alien infiltrator, and generally make their way slowly north, fighting Invid all the way.
But the book starts out with half the band falling into a "Genesis Pit," part of the Invid Regis' evolutionary experiments. Even in a cartoon, having your space-age warriors fighting dinosaurs is hokey, and in text it's just a bad idea. Really bad. It didn't help much that Rand, the self-taught native Forager, seems to know what each dino is properly called. Rand knows this stuff? It doesn't make sense! And where did the Invid learn about dinosaur environments to recreate how they lived? And what about the dinos themselves? Where did the genetic material come from?
But as bad as it is, it's only one episode of the story. But there are problems overall as well. I have some difficulty believing Annie can remain so steadfastly immature despite all the hardships they go through. In an animé that's all right; that's simply what her character is like. But when it's put into text, with all the episodes strung together, it becomes astounding that her character never seems to grow, or even grow up. Also, plot points are easy to see coming, even when they aren't overly foreshadowed. They're really that cliche, sometimes.
Perhaps worst of all, the book is just as episodic as the last one. The story lacks the grand scope that filled the first two generations and gave it an overarching story to follow. This is just another travel quest, with guns and fighter planes and motorcycles instead of wizards and dragons and horses.
The characters are still consistent - perhaps too consistent - and the writing quality is all right, considering what McKinney had to work from. But the story quality went down drastically for this one.
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