Review: Endeavor’s Run (Hope Prophecy #1) by Tobin Marks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When it comes to science fiction stories, I’ve seen some common tropes as I’ve read more and more from the genre over time. There have been times when I’ve been surprised by ideas used in a story and other times where I felt more lukewarm about a concept.
I say this because Tobin Marks’ Endeavor’s Run surprised me with a major idea the story plays with and it made a lot of the worldbuilding really interesting to follow! And while there were things I caught that I have questions about, overall, I really like the concepts Tobin Marks is working with!
Before I go into any more detail, I want to discuss some general thoughts I have. Let’s get into it!
Thoughts
I really like the main concept the story plays with, with the positions of power in the story and the transitions they go through. I think it was interesting, for example, to see the place where the character Bane comes from and the environment he grew up in. Seeing the drama on Drakon Ruus was one of the most intriguing concepts the story explored, and I loved seeing how it progressed over time!
On the other side of things, I really liked the sense of exploration in this story with the discovery of Aqueous. While some of the science used when discussing it flew over my head, it was still really interesting to see what it was like and what the characters were able to discover about it! I find myself still mulling over questions about this planet and what role it may play down the line.
Anyway, now that we’ve talked about that, let’s move on to structure!
Structure
As interesting as the overall story is, I do have an issue with the structure. I think the narrative is juggling too many points of view for this particular story. While it is very interesting to see how each one fleshes out the story, their respective arcs were somewhat difficult to keep track of because there were so many of them. I think that may also tie into an issue I saw with the writing, but I’ll get to that in its respective section.
However, I will say that the way the structure flowed in a way that was easy to get behind, even if I struggled with all the different points of view. It’s easy to see how each chapter, each event, lends to the development of the plot and allows the reader to see clear progression as time goes on. While in the beginning it took me some time to understand what the story was doing with the structure, once I understood how it was being built, I had a much greater appreciation for it.
Well, I think that’s all I have on the structure. Let’s get into the writing next!
Writing
The writing is where I started to notice some things that distracted me from the story a bit. The prose itself is good, and it kept me engaged throughout the story and helped build an interesting world. However, I did notice issues with the pacing, especially toward the end. With a good portion of this story follows Alex’s arc, the pacing going at a somewhat slower speed made sense at first. However, it started to drag toward the end and felt like it was taking too long to get to the conclusion. This isn’t to say that there’s actually anything wrong with the ideas used, but they just lingered a bit too long. Toward the end, it kept feeling like we were getting to the point where the story was reaching the conclusion, only for that not to be the case.
As I mentioned earlier, the other thing I noticed was the different perspectives and how not all of them worked for me. I think this was mainly due to certain characters’ voices being difficult to discern from other characters. This didn’t happen for every piece of dialogue, but when it did, I often had to reread conversations to make sure I knew who had which stance in a conversation. Not every voice used distinct enough word choice to make who was speaking obvious, and it made the dialogue tricky to follow at times.
Well, with all that said, I think I’ve covered everything I wanted to. Let’s wrap this review up!
Conclusion
Now, despite the issues I did see with the story, I actually really like the concepts being explored and the characters’ journeys as the plot progresses. I found myself invested in what happened with all these characters to the point where I still have questions about where they’re headed next!
While I did see some issues with the story’s execution, I still greatly enjoyed this. For that reason, I will be giving this story four stars.
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