This slender, largely understated and unpretencious novel shows Simmons at his best; it's not bloated, doesn't have irrelevant lit. crit. essays stuffed into it and quietly grips despite mostly pretty low stakes.

You go to the moon; you walk on the moon; you come back. Now what? Richard Baedecker did it as part of the Apollo programme. Years later he's drifting, divorced, estranged from his son, unable to understand the personal significance of what only 12 people have ever done. Enter the Manic Pixie Dream Girl - except she does defy the cinematic trope in a couple of significant ways.

I perked up when the ex-astronauts decided to climb Uncompahgre Peak in Colorado.

This wasn't a terrible book. It started off well, and has an interesting premise, and was really good for regrettably brief moments. But it was a struggle - there were long passages of boring in between and the ick factor was high with repeated graphic rape/sexual assault and violence scenes. Gratuitously frequent, that is. I get it, the psychic vampires are terrible people, but they seem to be included for titillation rather than actually furthering the story or revealing character.

Anyway, after 8 hours of slogging through this, I'm done. I can't face another 31 hours of it. Enough. DNF at 21%

Audiobook, via Audible, which I have returned for my $7 refund. The audio performances by Mel Foster and Laural Merlington were fine.

I was trying to read this book for the Booklikes Halloween Bingo 2019, for the square Vampires: Vampires, preferably non-sparkly, in all of their glorious fictional permutations. Fortunately, I have a good backup ready to go, They Thirst - Robert R. McCammon,Rowena Morrill.

Prior Updates:

Oct07 15%

I'm 6 hours into this audio and still have almost 34 hours left to go. It's interesting in bursts, but not so wholly engaging that I'm not frequently checking my progress. I'm not sure I'll last through this whole book before DNF'ing. I'm already thinking about what other books I can read for this square.