Killian

I started out really enjoying BNW, but the longer it went on the more my love for it waned until I was left counting the pages till the end, which is never a good sign.

I found some of the worldbuilding in BNW to be delightfully unnerving, in particular when a character proudly explains some messed up mechanism of control adopted by the world state. Some things really did not land with me though worldbuilding-wise: the society's obsession with Ford was a bit hard to suspend disbelief over, it's especially eye-rolling when they explain how crucifixes had their tops chopped off to form a 'T' shape (after Ford's Model-T) instead of a cross to show reverence to Ford... c'mon man.

I also have to admit that I found it very hard to push through the middle 50% of the book, after John becomes part of the story. At first I found John interesting because he came from outside the "civilized" world, but I don't think he should have taken the spotlight away from Bernard, who I was enjoying a lot more (and whose development I was a lot more invested in). A lot of the the themes become extremely repetitive around this time too and the prose is just all over the place (it's obnoxious how John just decides to speak Shakespearean English when he likes). It does pick up again in the final act however during the meeting with Mustapha Mond, but the actual ending is rather flat in my opinion.

Enjoyed my time with this, it became a real page-turner for me once the plot revealed itself to be far more than the initial murder. I thought it kept a good brisk pace right up until near the end but kind of stumbled over the finish line. I was really hoping the book would lean more into the Op's desensitisation to murder and the joy he got out of pitting the people of Poisonville against each other, but just as you think there might be some introspection, the action picks up one last time, the loose ends are tied up (or killed) and it's case closed, plain as day. I guess that's the downside of it being a hard-boiled detective story that's played straight, but I just wish I could have seen more nuance to that side of the protagonist.

Really good read, and compared to Blood Meridian I had a much easier time following this one (although I think both are absolute classics). I'm a big fan of how this novel turns crime fiction right on it's head. It doesn't even try to tie up everything up in a neat fashion, instead it does an incredible job highlighting the senseless violence of the current post 9/11 era and how the world is/was shaping up to alienate an older generation that fought for ideals that no longer exist anymore. Also, I think it's fair to say at this point that McCarthy writes some of the best and most unhinged villains out there.

I enjoyed my time with Rama and can definitely see how this was a very influential contribution to science fiction, although I think at the same time it suffers from the author's strange decision to normalise certain concepts within Rama's worldbuilding.

I liked the opening where it is explained how the human race developed into a star-faring civilization, and I enjoyed the bits of political intrigue that dotted the chapters, but I really did not enjoy the normalized polygamy and the concept of the "simps". These concepts didn't meaningfully contribute anything to the narrative, and they're never acknowledged with the weight that they would deserve. Whenever the MC's wives are mentioned, its usually because he's been neglecting both of them and that's typically phrased in a comedic way, and don't even get me started on the simps. The in-world reasons for these two concepts really did not hold any water for me and it just kind of pulled me out of the read as being a weird sign of the times this book was written in or just a random thought the author thought might be interesting.

The prose of Rama is incredibly dry and professional, which I loved as a change of pace from more "heroic" or "quirky" science fiction novels, The characters by and large do not cause drama with each other and instead are intensly focused on the tasks at hand, which was a wise choice as the mystery of this novel is incredibly captivating, and I have never read a book that conveys a sense of sheer scale as well as Rama. However there are several times where the main character makes extremely innapropriate remarks about the only female crewmate on his ship, which if it was handled well or had narrative consequences would be acceptable, but that was not the case at all because the professional focus of the book forces everyone to get on with their work. So these remarks are made and then just forgotten about, but just like the simps and the wives, it takes me out of the mystery that I had been so engrossed in.

I know a lot of that sounds negative, and it is, but the core conceit and mystery of Rama is so good that I would recommend it still to those who are fans of science fiction, especially low-sci fi.

This was one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in a while, it kept me gripped from beginning to end. The story structure may appear a little rigid, it seems to follow a pattern of: Problem -> Solution -> Complication -> Resolution, which should look familiar to those who have read "The Martian". With that said, I cannot deny how effective it is as a storytelling tool for keeping the reader engaged. The author manages to keep the stakes of each chapter high enough that you can only see the problem in front of you, as if masking this simple yet effective storytelling pattern.

I feel like the author did a good job balancing the "real" science with the sci-fi elements when it came to the plot. While it still demands some suspension of disbelief on the reader's part, the book does it's best to make everything "make sense" within the fiction. It also does this without overloading the reader with pointless jargon, Weir does a good job at telling the reader only what they need to know instead of getting into the weeds about everything.

As someone who normally does not like flashbacks as a narrative tool, I thought the use of them in this book was quite clever. They typically follow a very tense moment aboard the Hail Mary, allowing some breathing room between crises, although some of the flashbacks end up being quite tense in their own right which can shake things up a bit.

This is such an easy and gripping read that I highly recommend this to anyone even remotely interested in sci-fi, espeecially if you're a fan of Weir's previous work like "The Martian".