I loved the premise of The Lighthouse of Kuiper by E.M. Rensing. Sign me up for anything that involves space and a race against time.

One of the things I appreciated the most about this book was Rensing's bold creation of a new world and its inhabitants. It felt fresh and original.

However, I really struggled to get into this book. If I am still trying to figure out what is going on after 25 pages, the book will be more of a chore than a pleasure for me. I chalked my lack of engagement down to all the new terms that I was trying to understand. They came hard and fast on every page. I tried to build this new world in my head, but sometimes got confused between the characters (there were a few who I was still mixing up by the end of the book) and the “people groups” i.e. the Iapetans, the Toks, the Ibbies and the voiders.

When I read and don’t fully understand, I just keep going, trusting that it will all make sense in the end. So, while I got the general jist of the plot, I feel like I lost some of the nuance in the story. As a result, this was not a compelling read for me unfortunately. Rensing's writing is vivid and descriptive, but not enough that I was able to make full sense of the story.

Nevertheless, I felt that this is an ambitious story (the first in a trilogy) and very cinematic in scope. It would make a visually stunning film and then at least, all the things that I did not understand would be laid out clearly on the screen for me to see. Sign me up for that.

Earth is a disaster. Mankind has moved off world, to the planets and moons. Tharsis was a military soldier who happened to be a Martian. Things are slowly regressing downward. Suddenly radio waves from Kuiper start broadcasting.

Unfortunately DNF'd at 40%. There was honestly not much wrong with it, I think it just simply wasn't for me.

I’m a sucker for some space colony dystopia - I am steadily working my way through every sentence of The Expanse series - so The Lighthouse of Kuiper is right up my alley.

I have some minor quibbles such as some pronoun confusion (there’s one section where everyone has the same pronoun but no names are used; it’s confusing) and Tharsis’ constant whinging about how much more attractive Ibbie women are than Martian women so she has no chance of ever being loved.

It gets old.

It also doesn’t seem to serve any purpose for how often it’s brought up, except that every time a man even gives her a hug she goes weak at the knees for how starved of attention she is.

Those are quibbles, though. I did really enjoy this book. The only real problem it has is the problem a lot of science fiction stumbles into: too much information too soon.

The first few chapters are a massive historical/cultural/political/species-ical lesson on the human race as is in the entire galaxy and it’s overwhelming. I never did figure out the differences between the various types of humans, which Landlord went with which planet, or even really what the Landlords were. After a certain point, I just went along with what was happening at the moment.

Now, if you look at something like The Expanse, it’s historical/cultural/political/species-ical set up is just as complex, but the authors take their time rolling it out. We only know what we need to know right now, and they make good use of the characters to deliver this information without an info dump.

It’s a hard balance to strike, especially since this is part of a trilogy so Rensing will want to keep a few cards back for the later books, but I’d argue that a lot of the history readers are given isn’t actually valuable to the plot.

The universe that Rensing’s created is very complex - and very interesting. I’d love to have a slower, more concise walkthrough of the dynamics so I can properly understand it. Tharsis - as well as most of the side characters - shows a definite character arc throughout the book. Not necessarily a steady progression from one point to the other, but who among us doesn’t regress into bad habits now and then?

Lighthouse also doesn’t have a strict morality to it, which I found refreshing. Often in fantasy and sci-fi you get an almost preachy attitude about the sanctity of humanity and blah, blah, blah. Rensing’s humanity is as fucked up as the real humanity, which makes Lighthouse infinitely more relatable and believable.

She also doesn’t pull her punches - and they aren’t at all where you think they’ll be - so be prepared to walk away bloody. I’m definitely looking forward to the next two books and unravelling the mysteries I don’t quite understand.

I wanted to read this book because I love SciFi! Space has always intrigued me and this book gave me a chance to dive into that word through words. The characters were were well written and gave off strong and amazing presences!

I will say that I found that there were certain parts that made the book slightly hard to get into, especially when I had to re-read here and there. I believe that this book will do well for those who love their SciFi and who want to get in a thrilling world!

This book has a really great premise and from the description I thought I was going to love this but sadly I didn't. Although the writing is great I couldn't get engaged with this storyline or the characters. I think a lof of people will love tis as its military sci-fi but it just wasn't a hit for me.

I'm angry at this book. I really wanted to like it, but I did not finish it. I started to get restless at the 15% mark and at the 17% mark I skipped ahead to 20% to see if anything improved and it didn't and I gave up.

Of the recent science fiction I have read, I think this wins top marks for imagination and ambition. There are flashes of excellent writing but not enough and it gets a hard fail for story telling.

I think it is a tragedy that no editor thought to guide the writer to reduce the amount of exposition dumped on us in dialog and narration, which in turn ruins the pace and the plot.

This book has good things about it, but since I expected science fiction and got military book, it just didn't sit right with me. I believe the description of the book doesn't match it and should be adjusted so the book can get to the right audience. With the right audience, this book should be a great fit.

Difficult for me to fully get into and once things got up and going I had a hard time really caring about anything that was going on at all. Very middle of the road sci fi fare.

Beware there is a lengthy and confusing preamble to contend with before hitting the tale proper. BUT I FEEL ITS WORTH IT!
I was struggling to understand and remember everything in the first few chapters and was considering giving up but i decided to go with the flow and concentrate less and just get a feel for the history of human expansion into the solar system and hoped it would make more sense later.
I think it was approximately chapter eight before i felt i was starting to get into the story and begin to enjoy it. And it is a good hard sci-fi tale with lots of clever concepts. The main character Tharsis is likeable as we follow her dealings with the all powerful Landlords of the system.. I never found the reading easy and i presume that is a deliberate ploy from the author to keep readers thinking. And it is a book that keeps you thinking once finished.

Even without knowing the author’s background, the book description already makes it clear this is military science fiction. The military part mainly lies in the fact that Tharsis, the main protagonist, is in the military, and in the command structures that are present, and not so much in tactical (space) battles. The general society structure and story type are comparable to The Expanse (for instance). In both cases, the entire plot revolves around a handful of characters single-handedly tackling a solar system wide problem while also battling some personal inner daemons. The Lighthouse of Kuiper is not The Expanse of course, but it gives an idea of where in the broad spectrum of science fiction this story can be situated.

Rensing has come up with a fair amount of new ideas and they are fired at the reader at a rapid pace. Keeping up with the rapidly expanding new terminology is hard. There's no glossary so once you've forgotten what something meant —which happened to me sooner than I expected— there's nothing to fall back on. Moreover, the new concepts are only explained sparsely and rather vague. I don’t mind that things are left to the reader’s imagination, but in this case you really need to guess *a lot* of concepts by how the author uses them. I was constantly puzzling together small fragments of information and even then not really getting it always. As a consequence, it was difficult to get into the story, and I regularly got lost and went back, often not to any avail. After having read about a third, I realized I was still wondering too often what it all meant and what I actually was reading, and that I was not spending time enjoying the story because of that. Unfortunately, it never got any better. I stubbornly kept reading, and while some things became clear to me eventually, others I was never able to really fathom.

A second stumbling stone was the strong language. Rensing generally has a pleasant writing style that is easy to like, but the excessive use of f*ck(ing) and scat (the word for sh*t in this book) is truly appalling. I am not sure there actually is a page on which none of those words are used. Swear words and strong language have never made a book better, imho, and it really started to annoy me after a while. It was an unnecessarily distraction away from trying to understand and getting to like the story.

Based on the book description, I was convinced that this book was right up my alley. The ideas that Rensing has are really original and interesting and are 100% something I would usually like, but the choices about how to construct the entire story telling, as explained above, made me never get into it and it always felt like I was behind on things. Alas, the click never came.

I tried so hard to get into this book. I loved the premise, and I was promised a fresh new take on the sci-fi genre. What I did like was the characterisation - strong voices heard all around. But it took me too long to get into this book, and I found myself having to re-read sections and try to keep up with the narrative. To me, if I can’t immerse myself in a book quickly and relatively easily, it’s not a book I’m going to enjoy. DNF at approx 20%.

3 stars because I think this book stands up, and can hold its own in the genre of sci-fi, and will delight many other readers. It just wasn’t for me.

A thrilling and nail biting story. I had so much fun with this one. I stayed up late every night interested in what was going to happen next. I’ll be keeping an eye out for anything else this author writes.