Michael Ross

I appreciated how short of a read it was (I think I finished the whole book in two hours) but still enough to get me invested in the story.

It was a good little story for what it was. Obviously I can’t compare it to a larger sci-fi novel because that’s not what it aims to be. It reminded me a lot of Hugh Howey’s novels like Wool and Sand and how they were originally released as a series of novellas. I think this book is better however in that it contains a whole story. While the ending definitely leaves it open for more, I don’t feel required to read the next book to get the whole story.

It reminded me also of Klara and the Sun, making me think about what it means to be human, and the feelings of artificial intelligence.

Personally liked it better than the first book. Thought the pacing was better, and the switching viewpoints kept things constantly moving and interesting.

It was a good book, but didn’t feel like a story about characters who “truly” had grit. When I think about someone with grit, I think about someone who perseveres through suffering. Stories like Unbroken and Hacksaw Ridge. I didn’t feel like a couple shootouts and some minor wounds felt like a whole lot of suffering. In fact, this book just felt like the beginning of a larger story, but it didn’t go anywhere. I felt like it was too short. I haven’t seen either of the movies, but after hearing that they don’t really leave anything out of the book, then it would reason that the book is somewhat short since you can’t fit a whole lot in a two hour movie.

Overall it was a good book, but I don’t think it lived up to the hype/expectation, and didn’t feel like a ton of grit. Maybe I just didn’t get what the book was trying to reveal. I recommend watching the movie instead, it sounds like it’s probably just as good, and the on screen representation of this story likely feels more “gritty”.

Read this on my own. I finished the book and feel I was able to grasp only a portion of what Steinbeck was trying to portray to the reader. I did love the juxtaposition with Candy’s dog though.

It was a decent, interesting read, but the format didn’t follow the typical format for a story. There was no single rising action, climax, and then falling action. There were four! And none of the climaxes were that grand. I kept reading through the book waiting for the big conflict but it never happened. Still, an interesting sci fi read. From reading the descriptions of the other books in the series, it seems they probably follow the more typical format.