Stephen King’s Under the Dome was adapted into a CBS series a few years ago. The book was good (not great) but the show was awful (not mediocre) and I hate-watched the hell out of it for some reason. That reason was The AV Club’s weekly recaps, where Joe McAlister (one of several protagonists) was nicknamed “Exposition Joe” because he couldn’t do or see anything without explaining what he was doing or seeing. “The cracks are getting wider!” I know! It’s on TV! Rhodium Pirates, after a strong opening chapter, is Exposition Joe and devolves into multiple backfiller conversations about, for example, General Bill Decker:

Sonny Barton looked around the small group. “Well, you heard what General Decker is asking for…”

Kaz immediately retorted, “First, don’t call Bill Decker ‘General.’ At least not to his face. He hates that for some reason.”

Billy Street nodded. “That’s right, Sonny. We all know his reputation as one of the best military leaders ever, but he expresses a strong desire to leave all that in the past.”

Jesus Christ.

“He likes to be called ‘Bill’ or ‘Commander’ or ‘CO,’ but never ‘General.’”

Sonny sighed. “I know, I know. I always forget. He just seems to embody the essence of a general…”

It sounds funny and I guess it could be, in the right hands, but come on. And that’s not the only name talk!

Vector continued, “I’ve named it ‘Navo Village,’ after my girl, Rebecca Navarro.” He grinned.

Billy asked, “That’s the one everybody just calls ‘Becca,’ right?”

Vector nodded. “That’s right. She likes that nickname.”

Groooan. Additional motifs regarding scenes of beautiful Zurich, chairs that appear to be covered in black leather, ripples caused by drops of liquid falling into pools and spell-checking—spell-checking!—also fail to compel. Drag. There isn’t much to be done here due to a pointless story and shallow characters but Omar Fink could at least make it shorter. Here’s my hacky bloggo attempt to tighten a particularly clunky sentence. I’ll mark up the original:

Then it turns into a game of who can dodge better, and who gets the first hit dodgeball.

Indeed, “dodgeball” is a thing that exists, a game involving balls and the acts of hurling and dodging them. “Dodge.” “Ball.” “Dodgeball.” You’re welcome.

Rhodium Pirates is labeled “Kilo-1,” presumably the first in an eventual series—shades of UFO’s confidence, and good for him! Except… it is surely a sequel to Fink’s earlier Star of Epiphany. The covers even share the same space elevator clipart. Is this a Dark Forces/Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight/Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast progression, making Star of Epiphany “Kilo-0”? Odd. Never mind that “Rh 45” also features prominently—sure, I can make the jump that “Rh” is the symbol for and “45” the atomic number of rhodium because I have a periodic table hanging in my Animal Crossing bedroom. But were I naive enough to compile a list of forty-four books to avoid it wouldn’t take long.

It’s unpleasant to read single-star books and maybe worse to rate them that way. I’ve done it once before, with pleasure, to Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. I hated that goddamn book and it won the fucking Booker Prize. Rhodium Pirates is better in that it’s only poorly written and dull but not offensive with baby-talk and whatnot. And Fink is probably right that the Earth is doomed and we’ll all flee out the space before long. And reading is better than not reading. And I won this in a Goodreads giveaway. Right! Thanks! (Sorry.) ⭐