Privateers by Ben Bova
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A rather hard book to get through. It's dated in all the worst ways, but perhaps not in the most atrocious. The hardest part is the plot. The worldbuilding is merely a cold-war what-if with Soviets as the winners and holding economic dominance over everyone, with our MC from the first Grand Tour book hiding out -- away from the USA, mind you -- trying to do the underdog space-flight thing.

The rest is all love interest, evil soviet dude going after his girlfriend, and some '50s era derring-do.

This might have been okay if it had been snappy and sharp and humorous, but it really wasn't. It was workmanlike and kinda dull.

I'm reconsidering my desire to go through the rest of the Grand Tour at this point if the plots are going to be this boilerplate.


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