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Doomsday | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Jack McKinney | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Robotech: First 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 war is over, and nobody won. Earth is a blasted wasteland dotted with wrecked Zentraedi starships. Humanity consists of a few tens of thousand people - those onboard the SDF-1 during the final battle and a scattering of survivors on the planet. The Zentraedi, though, aren't any better off; their fleet was annihilated in the tremendous explosion that ended the war, and most of their kind have been shrunk, "micronized" to human size, and are now trying to fit into a peaceful existence. But now, two years later, some are reverting to their warlike ways, and have found a leader to rally behind: Kyron the Backstabber.
The book starts off well. In a half-dozen pages or so it details the history of Protoculture and the Robotech Masters, both things that have only been sketchily given before. But then it returns to the plot of the first five books, and everything slides downhill. The conflict is just plain weak; after an all-out battle against nearly five million starships, a few hundred disgruntled Zentraedi seem hardly a threat.
The book also includes a few things that generally just piss me off. The laws of physics are anthropomorphized. Minmei's cousin Kyle hates the military and has dedicated himself to foiling all their plans and calling them warmongers, refusing to see what is obvious. And he is abusive of Minmei, verbally if not physically, and I kept waiting for her to get up and leave. She does, eventually, but it's just one more fight in a list of many, and we never see Kyle again. His character just kind of fades away instead of ending dramatically like he should.
The biggest problem I had in the book was the romantic angle. There has been a love triangle building between Rick, Lisa, and Minmei through the entire series, but here it is essentially the main plot. But it is so absolutely filled with the things I have always detested about cartoon romances. Things said in just the wrong way, a quick peck on the cheek given as thanks witnessed and considered a sign of true love, missing a date with one to see the other for a short time and then the first discovers it... any romantic relationship will have its missteps, but it seems like this one is nothing but missteps, and after a while it got tiring and annoying.
There are other problems in this novel, ones that once again derive from adhering to the anime too closely. Thoughts and actions are sometimes so incredibly disparate that the characters seems to have some kind of mood disoarder, flipping their decisions about on a moment's notice. To his credit, the thoughts that McKinney gives the characters thoughts that are much more realistic than the actions, and I admit that changing the actions would not have been the minor issue it would have been in previous books. That doesn't make it any easier to read, though.
This is essentially a bridge piece between the first generation and the second. But, all in all, it is entirely unnecessary. The whole text can be safely discarded, and should have been.
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