Started out great and went downhill from there..... ( )

This is an alternative history of the space flight. Flynn writes a story that covers 10 years between 2000 and 2009.It begins with the heroine realizing that the Earth may be in danger from an asteroid. It ends with her having created major changes in America's educational system and facilitid major technological advancements in space transportation. The bulk of the story is how she and her company is able to create this change. In a lot of was the story degenerates into a soap opera. It gives the reader the point of view from multiple characters in various industries and their plans within plans to accomplish a mission that only the heroine has complete mission and the looming danger that motivates it. In terms of fore shadowing the future Flynn gets the space technology surprisingly right. Yet he fails to predict the rise of the internet or cellphones. These misses distract from the flow of the novel. At times keeping tract of the 11 major get daunting. On the other hand listening to the audio book was fun. Narrator is able to give each character a distinctive voice that not possible with the paper or Ebook. ( )

(This review is for the entire series, since it doesn't really end at a terribly satisfying place at the end of each novel. There is some attempt at closure at the end of each book but he has basically one very long story to tell and he's not done until the very end.)

This series was pretty good, but looooooooong. So many characters. Most of the many subplots are kind of interesting. It definitely held my attention through four long novels. But I was definitely done when he finally wound up the last novel.

The most interesting story to me, and the one that threads it all together, is the story of the tycoon whose obsession is to protect the earth from asteroid impacts. But this story is intermixed (in a very satisfying way, actually) with the same tycoon's attempts to fix education (so that we *can* go to the asteroids) and keep control of her company (again, so that we *can* go to the asteroids). And of course it's all mixed up with her relationships (which was, frankly, less satisfying but actually not bad). It tells the story over several decades (I think; I can't quite remember, but it was certainly many years).

Most of the rest of the subplots are in some way about the teenagers whom she saves from a derelict school system and gives new hope and life. This was long and complicated, but it was still satisfying to see them rescued from a life with no future, and accomplish something worthwhile as adults, in so many different ways. I wish I knew of some school system in the real world that had such a phenomenally high success rate at converting otherwise wasted humans into world-class scientists, engineers, and poets, because it would be totally worth supporting. But the story is told in such a way that you don't feel the improbability of such a high success rate; you just feel her passion to make it happen, and cheer it on.

I picked up this story because there are not that many science fiction works about the near-term exploration of the solar system (compared to, say, going to other star systems at speeds faster than light).

Theses stories were started over twenty-five years ago, but they didn't feel dated to me. They accurately portray what we see increasingly today: corporate space programs rather than exclusively government sponsorship. ( )

Like Atlas Shrugged meets The Right Stuff, but with more children. It reminded me a little of Anna Karenina—lots of dysfunctional families and nobody is happy. Not very believable, yet well written and entertaining. Despite almost 900 pages, it doesn't come to any real resolution. I guess I'll have to get the next books in the series. ( )

Great book! ( )