Moment Zero

[Schizoposting]

Recently, as part of the Tailored Realities collection, Brandon has published a new sci-fi action novel: Moment Zero. Since I haven't seen anyone else discuss it, I decided to make this thread to review it.

The basic premise of the novel is a buddy cop story, in which an apocalyptic event sends one cop into the future, and their partner, into the past, before said apocalypse. They must then work to stop the event from happening, from both time streams. 

Now, Moment Zero reads as if it was expressly meant to be adapted—and I don't necessarily mean this as a bad thing: it's simply that it's written in such a way that it can easily be turned into a marketable action film, without losing anything. Conversely, something like Mistborn, would take a lot more ingenuity and reworking to be successfully adapted.

As for the novel itself, it's very fast paced, and it never fails to be entertaining. However, while it did have an interesting postmodern take on heroism, Moment Zero felt a bit flat at times, particularly pertaining to the villain's motivation. I think that this is partially because of the novel's short length, which limited the scope of the themes that it could explore. (Although, Defending Elysium managed to do more with far less). Overall, I think that Moment Zero is good, but it lacks the literary depth to be truly exceptional.

But I'm curious to see if anyone else has any other opinions regarding this work.

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

Recently, as part of the Tailored Realities collection, Brandon has published a new sci-fi action novel: Moment Zero. Since I haven't seen anyone else discuss it, I decided to make this thread to review it.

The basic premise of the novel is a buddy cop story, in which an apocalyptic event sends one cop into the future, and their partner, into the past, before said apocalypse. They must then work to stop the event from happening, from both time streams. 

Now, Moment Zero reads as if it was expressly meant to be adapted—and I don't necessarily mean this as a bad thing: it's simply that it's written in such a way that it can easily be turned into a marketable action film, without losing anything. Conversely, something like Mistborn, would take a lot more ingenuity and reworking to be successfully adapted.

As for the novel itself, it's very fast paced, and it never fails to be entertaining. However, while it did have an interesting postmodern take on heroism, Moment Zero felt a bit flat at times, particularly pertaining to the villain's motivation. I think that this is partially because of the novel's short length, which limited the scope of the themes that it could explore. (Although, Defending Elysium managed to do more with far less). Overall, I think that Moment Zero is good, but it lacks the literary depth to be truly exceptional.

But I'm curious to see if anyone else has any other opinions regarding this work.

I think it's one of Brandon's best works. It's action-packed, and I'm always a sucker for a good I-just-need-to-survive-long-enough-to-save-the-world ending.

Edited April 18 by Through the Living Hopper

[Schizoposting]

1 hour ago, Through the Living Hopper said:

I think it's one of Brandon's best works. It's action-packed, and I'm always a sucker for a good I-just-need-to-survive-long-enough-to-save-the-world ending.

I'm curious: what makes you think that this is better than his other works? I agree that it was very fun and action packed, but many of his other works (like The Lost Metal) are like this as well. So, for me at least, it doesn't really standout. 

Out of the entire collection, I would say that Snapshot, Perfect State, and Defending Elysium, are the best (the latter is criminally underrated, in my opinion), with Moment Zero being a tier below them.