oromei
Contains spoilers
It is a moody, unsettling, beautifully written, and mysteriously eerie story, and while I found the ending to be a little unsatisfying I overall quite enjoyed it. I liked following the musings of the protagonist and the generally clouded atmosphere, but often felt, after sitting with some of the biologists thoughts, that they seemed more like conjecture meant to sound scientific. I don't necessarily discredit it for that, though, since the biologist isn't a reliable narrator and so it feels acceptable. I found some of the flashback scenes with the husband a bit of a bore, and even though I understood them to serve introspective purposes for the narrator, I think the heavier focus on their relationship towards the end of the book chipped away at my interest in the story.
Contains spoilers
I enjoyed the book, but I'm not yet sure I liked it enough to continue with the series. I really wasn't a fan of the writing, but the story was interesting and compelling enough to keep me. I think, contrary to the pacing of the show, this was almost too fast-paced. I also found the romance plot between Lukas and Juliette off-putting, it didn't make sense to me at the start as it formed so was hard to accept as it progressed and detracted from the main plot. Excluding the obvious differences in storytelling between print vs screen, I felt that the changes made by the show runners better represented / portrayed the central themes and character development than the book did.
I was happily surprised by this novella. I tend to lean more towards fantasy than sci-fi, I typically avoid time travel themes, and I don’t read much poetic/prose-y writing these days, but this was **very** well done.
I found some of the pain points others criticized online, e.g. the intentional lack of thorough world building, to be really refreshing and honestly more suitable to the story (and kinda the point?). Overall, this was a lovely read.
