The Layered Page
This one is tough. I should really love the book for its premise: Philosophical in nature, asks question of existence and conciousness through the "eyes" of the main protagonist cloning itself in form of a neular network. The protagonist, like me, is a software developer, a fan of the Art of War from Sun Tzu and sarcastic, full on geek, sprinkling pop culture throughout the Universe. He is relatable but the superficial use of all that material to just justify some decisions turns it a bit cringe.
But my main problem is the way the story is structured and paced. I have listened to the audiobook (Half a start more and a big recommendation for that version), which accounts for some of the problems, and while the talented reader did different voices and impersonations of famous characters, like Homer (Simpson), it is very hard to keep track of all the branching of generations of Bobs. Add to this the huge time jumps between the clones and the distance, spanning multiple light years resulting in asynchronous communication across cryptically named star systems, and the book is too close to science to be enjoyable as fiction. You have to invest so much effort in tracking the individual characters, their personality and goals. Without much pay off.
From what I can synthesize from the multiple branching storylines, there is three main plots. Original Bob discovers a tribal-age race and plays god with it to protect it against extinction. Meanwhile two other bobs return to Earth to find it in a post-apocalyptic Kinder garden, trying to convince everybody to work towards compromises to benefit the human race as a whole instead of prioritizing their local ideologically close grouping and piss into each other's plate. And finally there is an armament race and chase of cat and mouse with one of the aggressive military-minded space probe collective which is threatening the existence of Bob himself. Other than that there is multiple smaller plots like the discovery of an alien race which might vipe out entire planets for nourishment or the mentally broken australian replicant which one of the bobs tries to help. Unfortunately these way more interesting plotlines just served as change of scenery to the Kill or Be Killed, Evacuating a Kinder Garden or Playing God with primates.
Alltough I can understand the choice as all of them explore some form of Existential Preservation.
This one is tough. I should really love the book for its premise: Philosophical in nature, asks question of existence and conciousness through the "eyes" of the main protagonist cloning itself in form of a neular network. The protagonist, like me, is a software developer, a fan of the Art of War from Sun Tzu and sarcastic, full on geek, sprinkling pop culture throughout the Universe. He is relatable but the superficial use of all that material to just justify some decisions turns it a bit cringe.
But my main problem is the way the story is structured and paced. I have listened to the audiobook (Half a start more and a big recommendation for that version), which accounts for some of the problems, and while the talented reader did different voices and impersonations of famous characters, like Homer (Simpson), it is very hard to keep track of all the branching of generations of Bobs. Add to this the huge time jumps between the clones and the distance, spanning multiple light years resulting in asynchronous communication across cryptically named star systems, and the book is too close to science to be enjoyable as fiction. You have to invest so much effort in tracking the individual characters, their personality and goals. Without much pay off.
From what I can synthesize from the multiple branching storylines, there is three main plots. Original Bob discovers a tribal-age race and plays god with it to protect it against extinction. Meanwhile two other bobs return to Earth to find it in a post-apocalyptic Kinder garden, trying to convince everybody to work towards compromises to benefit the human race as a whole instead of prioritizing their local ideologically close grouping and piss into each other's plate. And finally there is an armament race and chase of cat and mouse with one of the aggressive military-minded space probe collective which is threatening the existence of Bob himself. Other than that there is multiple smaller plots like the discovery of an alien race which might vipe out entire planets for nourishment or the mentally broken australian replicant which one of the bobs tries to help. Unfortunately these way more interesting plotlines just served as change of scenery to the Kill or Be Killed, Evacuating a Kinder Garden or Playing God with primates.
Alltough I can understand the choice as all of them explore some form of Existential Preservation.