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Writer's pictureAshley Mongrain

The Effort

Updated: Jul 13, 2021


Rating - ⭐⭐⭐


"When dark comet UD3 was spotted near Jupiter’s orbit, its existence was largely ignored. But to individuals who knew better — scientists like Benjamin Schwartz, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies — the threat this eight-kilometer comet posed to the survival of the human race was unthinkable. The 150-million-year reign of the dinosaurs ended when an asteroid impact generated more than a billiontimes the energy of an atomic bomb.


What would happen to Earth’s seven billion inhabitants if a similar event were allowed to occur?


Ben and his indomitable girlfriend Amy Kowalski fly to South America to assemble an international counteraction team, whose notable recruits include Love Mwangi, a UN interpreter and nomad scholar, and Zhen Liu, an extraordinary engineer from China’s national space agency. At the same time, on board a polar icebreaker life continues under the looming shadow of comet UD3. Jack Campbell, a photographer for National Geographic, works to capture the beauty of the Arctic before it is gone forever. Gustavo Wayãpi, a Nobel Laureate poet from Brazil, struggles to accept the recent murder of his beloved twin brother. And Maya Gutiérrez, an impassioned marine biologist is — quite unexpectedly — falling in love for the first time.


Together, these men and women must fight to survive in an unknown future with no rules and nothing to be taken for granted. They have two choices: neutralize the greatest threat the world has ever seen (preferably before mass hysteria hits or world leaders declare World War III) or come to terms with the annihilation of humanity itself.


Their mission is codenamed The Effort."


 

The Effort is a standalone sci-fi novel by Claire Holroyde.


The best word I could use to describe this book would be messy.


The multiple POVs were choppy and a lot of the perspectives were unnecessary as they didn't add anything to the plot. The book gets even more choppy towards the end as all concept of time is lost since the timeline kept jumping all over the place. New POVs were also added at the end of the book which did not help its coherency, and old POVs were abruptly cut off.


Another issue I had was with the plot direction itself. I thought the book would focus more on the scientific aspect, but instead, it just focused on people and how they were suffering which I didn't find to be the most interesting thing ever.


Overall, I wouldn't say I disliked the book, but this was pretty much Armageddon but less interesting.

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