Reviews for White Sands, Red Menace

The average rating for White Sands, Red Menace based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-12-12 00:00:00 Joseph Clemens While not quite as brilliantly wonderful as the first book, it's still quite enjoyable to spend time with these people, and it grew on me more & more; by the end it felt like a solid 4 star book. For awhile I vacillated between 3, 3 ½ or 4 stars, but it ended up a full 4 stars for me. Terry Gordon and her activism (against the bomb) (and smoking and social drinking) reminded me a bit of my mother. (In the early 60s at a family cabin camp we were told to collect and turn in material that I guess could be used to make nuclear weapons: my mother collected as much as she saw and didn't turn in any of it.) The events that unfold happen several years before my time/nearly a decade before I have many memories, but certain things brought back my own memories of my youth, particularly some of the pop culture and some of the foods. Smoking not just in the house with kids, but smoking and (light) drinking while pregnant, and no problem. Ah, the overrated 40s, and 50s too. (My mother also smoked during her pregnancy, and while I was young we had ashtrays all over the house, by then for company as my mother gave up smoking in about 1955.) Oh, the man who discovered Pluto (as a planet!) is mentioned. That brought up feelings as I still mourn the loss of Pluto's status. I wish the section and chapter titles had been listed in the front of the book, for second, third, etc. perusals. I love how things feel so real, including how not everything is wrapped up in a neat little package at the end. Some things are resolved but much is left hanging, and that made it feel like real life, and for me made the story more enjoyable. This book is a very worthy sequel, as it turns out. The story also could also work fine as a standalone book but I highly, highly recommend reading the first book, The Green Glass Sea, before reading this one.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-10-19 00:00:00 Kevin Kretz This is a middle grade historical novel. It is also a critique of the present day adult science fiction genre and its love affair with the space program--and the tension between the optimism fans of the genre claim to long for more of today and the troubling and not always optimistic origins of the things at the core of that optimism. Along the way, the book realistically depicts female scientists in the 1940s, an era in which we're sometimes led to believe female scientists just didn't exist. And oh, yeah, it's also all really well written. :-) Recommended, along with the book before it, The Green Glass Sea.