Catch Hold Of The Ascension Factor (The Pandora Sequence, #3) Produced By Bill Ransom Delivered In Leaflet

not nearly as well known as the Dune series, Herbert's trilogy with Bill Ransom is at least as potent, if not even more so, Whereas the Dune storyline gets progressively larger and larger, and more and more

snarled and difficult to decypher, the drama on the planet of Pandora is far more streamlined.
Rather than the competing interests ofdifferent guilds and houses, etc, Pandora has a single spaceships crew of humans, the first book is them trying to settle the planet, thend book isyears into the aftermath of that botched attempt, and therd book is the immediate consequences of thend book,years later.


Instead of a desert and sandworms, the planet presents the settlers with a sentient lifeform almost unimaginable in our experience: Kelp, But not just kelp its more than that. Its hard to describe without the space of three books to do it justice!

Basically, if you even vaguely like Dune, you should find these books and give them a chance.
Like me, you just might love them! Ummmmm, most of the reviews for this book kinda suck, What am I getting myself into



Okay, this wasn't really as bad as a lot of people are making it out to be.
Seems like a lot of folks just thought this one was terribly written because Herbert died before it was actually started and Ransom wrote it all on his own although he says he and Herbert had already plotted the whole thing out together.
Anyway, I couldn't really tell a difference,

I liked this series as a whole, though I do sort of wish it had gone in some different directions than it did, But I thought Pandora and the kelp were really interesting, and I generally liked the characters, I guess I'm glad I read this instead of trying Dune again, but I think I may have gotten Frank Herbert out of my system now.
He's just not quite my scifi style, I'll add a little more poison to the well it seems many of the positive reviews here don't focus on this book so much as the series as a whole.
The negative ones generally get to the point,

"The Ascension Factor" was written after Frank Herbert's death, Like "Hunters of Dune" and "Sandworms of Dune", it has a silly note of apology at the beginning from the author, though Bill Ransom's preface "My greatest fear was that I would lose that sense of presence, of good companionship, when this book ended.
With Frank, of all people, I should have known better, " is much better than Brian Herbert's "We tried to make the books as good as possible, ". I find myself wondering how many other people have written similar prefaces to their attempts to ride on the coattails of an author like Herbert, and have churned out similar mediocrity out of either incompetence or laziness.


Laziness is a funny accusation to level at the author of a long and complex novel, but I don't know a better way to put it.
Bill Ransom isn't a moron, and he's not an amateur writer, But this book is marginally better than Brian Herbert's shabby conclusion to the "Dune" series, It contains similar mistakes. The first/of the book comprises the musings of several characters and has scant significant plot, Musings, backstory, and reverie pockmark the rest of the book and disrupt the flow of the plot, Characters sometimes repeat themselves in Brian Herbert fashion, but more often, they contradict themselves,

For example, on one page, Flattery who, in spite of the ethical and moral integrity of his predecessor clone, is a monster on the level with Hitler, Stalin, or Idi Amin wonders if he's been to hard on the kelp.
For years he's deployed all the forces he can muster against the sentient stands, barely keeping shipping lanes open, Two or three paragraphs later, he wishes he'd whipped the worldwide oceans into shape, which he could have done easily, Why would a brilliant manipulator and manager of information commit such a mental discrepancy Schizophrenia No, just subpar writing, Ransom and his editor should have spotted more of these errors,

Some books read like great symphonies, every note in place, nothing that doesn't belong, "The Ascension Factor" clangs along like a bad pastiche of Mozart and Beethoven, starting with a sullen and laborious prelude and ending with an obnoxious cadenza.
The Ascension Factor brings the story of Pandora to a mostly satisfying conclusion, somewhat telegraphed by the title, I did hope to see a return of one more character, but the story didn't need it, and I see why the authors didn't, Could really feel the absence of Frank Herbert in the writing, Then again it might be that I didn't enjoy the trajectory the story was already begining to take, I feel that the firstbooks in the series were the strongest and the most enjoyable without all the cringe love story subplots, . . I read this many years ago and hated it,

I feel I should try reading it again now, This final book in the "Destination: Void" collaboration between Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom, set twentyfive years after the previous book The Lazarus Effect, concludes the story of the planet Pandora.
/

Classic scifi. Meaning of course that it was weird and not super enjoyable,
This series had some bright spots, Ships discourses on philosophy and worShip being some of the bright spots, but the vast majority was strange and not incredibly interesting thats not a great combo.
This last book was almost entirely trash, perhaps having something to do with the death of Herbert before its completion, but let's be honest, its not as if even he could have halted this train wreck, but he likely could have made it more interesting.
A boring train wreck is not something I thought possible till now, GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'll never know whether it was the homage as apology that prefaced this book which coloured my reaction to it.
My suspicion, however, is that it played a minor role,

I dug out the two preceding books and rifled through each after I finished The Ascension Factor, Rather fearfully, in fact. I was hoping that my memory of both justified the five star ratings I'd given, simultaneously sad that the premise set up in the series should have come to such a dismal end, and worried that in actuality sitelinkThe Jesus Incident and sitelinkThe Lazarus Effect were as poorly written and trite as The Ascension Factor.


One of the things which reportedly frustrates people about Herbert is his prose, He doesn't explain his meaning the reader must sift through clues, piece together snippets, hold multiple abstract concepts simultaneously in sight, He does not elucidate beyond a chapter quote that teases a direction of thought, It was this brilliance that was most clearly, and quite painfully, missing from The Ascension Factor, The ndimensional perspectives that Herbert brings to his work, the nuanced meaning and cryptic references to ideas that entice groping towards understanding, were wholly absent, This book was void pardon the pun of Herbert's ability to interweave themes through subtlety and inference,

So talking about the plot is a bit of a farce, It all went nowhere. It didn't finish on a note of grand vision or even abstruse complexity, It was a letdown of quantum proportions,

To be fair to the real author of this work, which is not Frank Herbert but Bill Ransom, who in their right mind would want the thankless task of trying to put pen to the path blazed by Herbert A brave soul, indeed, if a wellmeaning and somewhat foolhardy one.
Really lovedthough many thought it sub par compared to Dune, likedbut felt it getting childish in plot, and thought some things were just ridiculous in.
To pin the gripe down, well, is to say that the bad guys amp the cohorts of evil machinations were so grossly evil as to be incredulous, or outrageous.
I think there is a scene with a little urchin child getting drowned by a bad guy, This book has background story to it, Herbert passed away interim, and this book lacks in the keen perception amp insistent deductions which characterize protagonists like Paul or Duncan “Dune” or Mobius “High Opps”.


The water world set up can be a bit boring because there is just a flat landscape, no trees, no myriad of scurrying or galloping animals, no structures there are structures, floats of thin stuff, everything is underwater.
Another underwhelming thing is this: takes place in same planet but the story is far removed from its beginnings, even the great sentient kelp amp highlighters are gone : The poetry I recall being appropriate, but the narrative was often too lightheartedly cartoonish that there was little room for ponderous amp meditative verses.
Again, I think the making of this trilogy explains the outcome in some ways, Still a good read, or not so bad, those unfamiliar should definitely try his other stuff, thoughof this trilogy I think is great, its just that with this trilogy, one cannot say that its pure Frank Herbert SF.
read this in highschool and i loved it, just bought another copy of all three of them Woohoo! Done with Pandora! It was a ridiculous series that almost didn't feel like having any continuity.
The origin book was about a small crew on ahip, then the trilogy that followed felt like a completely different beast, with each of the books in it different from each other, as well.
Was there a common thread I guess the evolution of humanity, but unlike something like Dune, the Pandora Sequence was random, cruel, overly pompous, with pointless religious overtones that went nowhere and with inconsistent characters.
Worst of all, the ending of all of the books came out of nowhere, nullifying the meaning of most of the beginning,

The Ascension Factor is like that, as well, We start with a world ruthlessly ruled by a man justyears after the events of the previous book where things were left off with a society that was building spaceships to get to the hibernation pods in orbit.
And now it's a quasifeudal fiefdom in which people are controlled with fear, surveillance and famine, When the authors need technology, it's suddenly there, when they need people to be poor and starving, they scramble to have a line to throw in illegally in the sea to catch a fish.
I guess in a way that's plausible, considering I am complaining about this on a laptop after having read the book on a smartphone and knowing that there are people in the world somewhere living in abject poverty, but Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom want me to believe this happens at the same time with the same people.
And the ending, oh God, should be the textbook definition of Deus ex machina!

Bottom line: I thoroughly disliked the three main books of the "sequence" and I couldn't wait to finish them.
Now I did! I have no explanation on how I ended up remembering this series as good reading ityears ago, .