Not a badly written book but overall disappointing. It felt like reading a story about the secondary characters while the interesting ones were doing something cool nearby.

Kinda like Ringworld, but with less interspecies nookie and more ragging on big organized religion. Not bad. But I still can't figure out the orbital mechanics of the helix.

Reads like it was written by a 12 year-old with a thesaurus. Almost unreadable. Didn't get past page 75. Will donate it to the local junior high school. Maybe the 12 year-olds will like it.

If you Like your syfy “hard” don’t bother. But if you like a science-fiction book that has great character development, human stories, and a vision of worlds beyond, This is the book for you. I don’t understand why people always complain about Eric Brown and how his books aren’t science-fictiony enough. I find his Books always compelling, well written, great character development, and the science fiction is always amazing and thought-provoking. Love EB and his books! My favorite is Kethani.

This novel has some really great concepts and I can’t believe that Eric Brown isn’t as well know as I would have thought. Definitely recommend reading this if you’re a an avid reader of science fiction.

WHY HASNT THIS BEEN ADAPTED FOR TV? An absolute hidden gem of scifi, although the book is massive there is little to no filler everything has a purpose and the different races on the helix are all marvellous and even have different languages between them like that of the people outside agstran speaking a earlier version of the language spoke by the city dwellers (something alot of scifi overlooks is aliens having more than one language even though earth has hundreds) .The plot twists in the book...

This was yet another book that was both full of wonder and frustrating at the same time. Brown writes a fun old-fashioned space fantasy with wildly varied aliens and the adventure of colonizing a new world. The characters were a bit flat, but it was all good fun.However...a big however...yet another sci-fi author who obviously is really bitter about religion and attacks the idea of relgion and faith as if his sole goal is to mock anybody who believes in God as a silly child. And yet again, here

Helix starts off with the story I want to read. Colonists going to a new place and establishing a colony. I don't know why I'm drawn to this story - maybe its a lasting impression from my Robinson Crusoe/Swiss Family Robinson days... And then, like so may before it, it turned left. And it wasn't quite that story. Ultimately, its the story of 4 Humans who crash on a Helix shaped cluster of worlds and must try to find a suitable spot to awaken the sleeping colonists. But instead of Humans vs the E...

Awful, just completely awful. This book ranges from the laughably implausible (a mega structure of planet-sized DNA strands? A spaceship that crashes into said structure at interstellar speeds and people walk away?) to the badly written (includes one of the most unintentionally hilarious lines ever AND it is a scene where one of the characters is assaulted). The alien species are boring, their cultures paper-thin, their psychologies so obviously human they might as well be Star Trek humanoids wi...

This is definitely a page-turner and I liked some of the theme, which dealt with some of the problems with organized religion that can crop up, especially when confronted with certain realities dealing with space exploration. Other than that, a lot of the dialogue and progression of events was a bit juvenile for my tastes. Admittedly, though, the book held my interests enough.If you really enjoy science fiction and can be enthralled enough by the concept of the "great unknown universe" and the l...

I think what attracted me to this book was the concept of humans on their own trying to set up a colony on a new world against the odds. What I enjoyed about the book - I thought the concept of the helix was intriguing and imaginative - providing plenty of scope for a number of over novels. I thought the descriptions of the various worlds visited and the species living on them was nicely done. What I disliked about the book - the helix and the worlds on it ended up being the main focus - I was h...

I am a huge fan of scifi, and this book is a perfect example why. It's exciting with action & adventure, it's creative with details of different alien worlds, and it challenges you to think about humanity, our actions, where we're going as a species, and our place in the universe.

When I picked this book up, I did so on the promissing appearance of the cover and the blurb on the back. Overall, the story looked, and sounded interesting. Having suffered through this clichéd mess, I realise I should have taken a minute or two to read a few passawges from between the covers as well.I found this to be a fine example of bottom-of-the-barrel science-fiction. The characters wavered between painfully dull, and painfully stereotypical. And the dialogue was just about unbareable. It...

If you had asked me 65% of the way through, I would have given this book a 4.5. By the time I finished, it was a solid 3.5 if not a 3. I've never been so disappointed in a book.This review will contain spoilers, but they will be further down and labeled beneath a heading.At the start, I found the writing compelling. The characters were a bit stereotypical, sometimes to the point of annoyance, but the story was great. I was bummed at the idea of Hendry being left behind, though I suspected his in...

At the end of the 21st Century, the climate crisis and the resultant wars have made the earth a hellscape. The European Space Agency plans to send a ship on a millennium-long mission. It won't help earth, but it may enable the human race to start over and get it right this time. The ship travels at half the speed of light, and carries four thousand people in suspended animation, An explosion disrupts their trip, and instead of on a planet, they find themselves on a huge artificial metastructure:...

I like Eric Brown's work when it is based on the planet Earth be it in the past, present or future. Helix starts on Earth but moves away with an ark looking for a new home for humanity. The ark crash lands on a solar system based on a strange helix concept. This was just okay but manages to upset some reviewers when the idea of religion is slagged off. Didn't upset me.Ray Smillie

This book is probably for a younger audience because of its simplistic and shallow story.But first off, this is barely a sci-fi book. This is mostly a book about oppressive religion. Not at all what I expected! Nor what I wanted.Although some of the ideas in this book could have been great, they are not actually important for the story. That is unfortunate because the story has no real depth, characters are trying too hard to be persons you can feel for and certain major sci-fi-elements suddenly...

This is one of them Earth is soon going to succumb to flooding and it's time to send a bunch of highly skilled people off to another world type books. This one does it a little different than other's I have read of late. It's worth reading. The main characters are likeable, there is a lot that happens to said main characters, including an increase and sadly a decrease. The book does diverse into the fantasy gene, but that can't really be helped because we have no clue what is out there do we? Th...

This book started out great. Multiple interesting stories and characters. However, not long after the eponymous Helix was reached, a decline started. Needless flirting and love interest... a character who was almost a living deus ex machina in abilities... needlessly hidden details from some characters to others. Overall, I liked the story. The characters developed (some). I even enjoyed the resolution. Maybe what bothered me was that I feel like the story was truncated. The beginning had so muc...

Dystopia, interplanetary voyage, quest on an inhabited planet, a helical structure around a star housing many different civilisations brought there to save themselves. Interesting and enjoyable but not a re-read for me.