Saturn Rukh was certainly an interesting novel, A group of people are getting paid a billion dollars to travel to Saturn and prove that it is a viable source of meta - the fuel that propels the space crafts in this setting. Unfortunately, as you can see by the cover, Saturn isn't exactly unpopulated, and the crew soon finds themselves struggling just to escape with their lives.

The first 100 pages of this book were very difficult to read. It wasn't that this 'hard' science fiction was complex or hard to comprehend, it was just boring. I really didn't care about the exact size of the space ship (we get endless dronings of lengths, diameters, weights, densities, etc. of various areas and pieces.) I forced myself to keep reading it though, and the book did turn into a fascinating book. After the characters reach Saturn the plot finally begins to develop a bit more and the characters actually acquire some depth, and it quickly became an addictive page-turner.

I'm glad I stuck with it - I don't know how many times I wanted to put it down in the beginning - the story was very interesting and I did find that I cared about the characters in time, it was just the very slow start that hurt the novel for me. ( )