Instruct: Classify a review as either positive or negative.
Query: This is just a bad book.

Hogan starts us off in a nasty world heading toward an apocalyptic race/class war then proceeds to remind us over and over again that it's nasty without ever scratching the surface of what such a world would be like. This would be OK if it was just serving as the background for interesting science or character development.But the science is silly, which would still be OK if there was a meaningful message here. There isn't. The character development is superficial. The only characters that aren't stereotyped are entirely selfish and self-interested, and they're the good guys oppressed in this bad, bad world. The moral implications of their actions are dismissed with a wave of the author's pen and an idiotic happy ending tossed onto the last page or two.I've enjoyed some of Hogan's other work but don't waste your time with this.