A 4 star book with a 2.5 star ending. ( )

(2015) Sandford should stick to police thrillers. SF is not his cup of tea. I tried for 120 pages of this 486 tome, but could not get into it. Waste of my time. Get on with the story already. Semi good premise of an alien race's space craft coming to Saturn and mysteriously leaving after short stay. Why? could have been a good book.KIRKUS REVIEWQuite a departure for Sandford, who sets aside his Lucas Davenport crime franchise (Gathering Prey, 2015, etc.) and partners with photographer and sci-fi buff Ctein to leave Earth's gravitational field for the rings of Saturn.Sanders Heacock Darlington may be nothing more than a wealthy, handsome intern assigned to the Sky Survey Observatory, but he's the one who accidentally notices the evidence that something's approaching the gravitational field of Saturn and decelerating. Heavenly bodies don't decelerate that way, but spaceships do, and soon President Amanda Santeros (hey, it's 2066) is pulling out all the stops to send a mission to Saturn to investigate. The stakes are so high that only a few people¥Capt. Naomi Fang-Castro, who's quickly drafted as mission commander; Dr. Rebecca Johansson, who's charged with designing the ship's power plant; David ?Crow? Crowell, the rough-and-ready security chief; and a handful of othersÂ¥are told from the beginning that Saturn is the destination of the Richard M. Nixon. The goal behind this deceptionÂ¥to keep the Chinese from launching a competing missionÂ¥predictably fails, and the space race is on. Unlike their Chinese counterparts, who seem to get all the smooth sailing in the solar system, the Americans are beset by troubles. One of their two power reactors keeps shutting down. An accident in deep space claims a valued crew member. A mathematician aboard the Nixon starts an orgy club. The authors ladle on the tech details and blossoming romances, but the pacing is frustratingly episodic and discontinuous for both the characters and the readers until the ship reaches its destination, at which point the story assumes the momentum it needs to escape the ringed planet's formidable gravitational pull.James Bond meets Tom Swift, with the last word reserved not for extraterrestrial encounters but for international piracy, state secrets, and a spot of satisfyingly underhanded political pressure.Pub Date: Oct. 6th, 2015ISBN: 978-0-399-17695-1Page count: 496ppPublisher: PutnamReview Posted Online: July 15th, 2015Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1st, 2015

The authors' stated goal for this book was "real science, real technology", to avoid the made-up technobabble-based engineering that propels far too many sci-fi TV shows, movies, and books. In the Afterword, they provide a glimpse into the whole process they used to ensure that the science was as accurate as possible. And on this score, they succeed impressively. And I'm giving it 4 stars on that basis.

This is very much a thriller novel. (Someone once defined a thriller as "a science fiction story with a President in it". This qualifies in that regard.) It's a reasonably good one, although it's not my favorite genre/style. Based on that, I would have given it 3 stars. ( )

I'm a huge John Sandford fan--but science fiction...not so much. Saturn Run--a gripping sci-fi thriller that takes place in the year 2066--might have changed that.

When a massive alien spacecraft is spotted heading toward Saturn, a team of American and Chinese astronauts race to intercept it. What they find aboard the vessel will change the course of human history forever.

With a blistering plot, nuanced characters, and thriller-like twists and turns, Saturn Run is a must-read for fans of almost any genre. ( )

The first half of this books is pretty good, the second half, when the Chinese finally show up on the scene? Human nature takes over as do political motivations and sheer stupid greed - all realistic, sadly. Most of the science is pretty realistic too, more happily.

The takeaway here? Humans are humans and are quite, at their most base, stupid. When we pull ourselves out of that cesspit though, amazing things can happen. Just, not in this book. ( )