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This is probably one of the most complete novels ever written about life. The moral compass is so distorted and fractured throughout the book that by the end, you are left with that which is simply human. Was Anna a monster or just a victim? Was Alexei an impotent weakling, or truly the personification of Christian love? Were Levin and Vronsky merely representations of destruction and creation within the same existence? Perhaps, or perhaps not, but the novel reaches into the depths of life and lays bare all that is grey.
Originally posted at sampleuser.com.
This one was a pleasant surprise! The characters had great development and the plot always kept them interesting. Though at times it's a bit of sloth to go through some story arcs but overall it's on point. The sociopolitical play of events really keeps you interested even though the technological advancements seems lacking and sometimes it seems that we are not reading about a world in which nations can casually do space travel.
I thought that the Downbelow natives could've been explored better, they didn't get as much “screen time” as to what are there motivations for helping humans and so on, but only later did I realize that Cherryh has wrote quite a few books in this series detailing a lot around “Alliance-Union Universe”, so yeah...gonna keep me busy for a while.
Didn't find it as impressive as some of her other works but all in all it was an engaging read. The mix of Taoist philosophy with modern urge to control everything is well portrayed.
The second half of the book seems a little off. The criteria and laws setup in the first half are slowly broken down in the second as if all that didn't matter with the emergence of more and more bizarre events, or perhaps that was the intention! As with the character himself, with lessening grip on one reality, coming to understand the reality.
Starts out with good promise but quietly becomes a bit boring. And the end was extremely disappointing. Every thread of the story was forced to a conclusion, which made the ending seemed without any conclusive thought.
The idea of Tine world is very fascinating but the whole thing was poorly developed.
The “hypothesis” is pretty engaging but at every point I felt something was missing. Like a key detail that was just explained in hurried dialogue. Too many questions around the basic premise. The observer needed for an ever expanding universe didn't make sense in the dust theory, Autoverse 'somehow' changing the rules of the TVC universe was not explained in any detail, and that was a crucial part to the ending.
I wouldn't call it hard sci-fi though, just more philosophical as it raises some very interesting questions around second-life type things. It's a good read but not satisfying.
The dialogues were disjointed and felt very artificial, though that could've been just the translation. The science and story though is just so good! Especially the way it builds over different time spans is just so great. Definitely a bit on the hard sci-fi side but even for non sci-fi fans it would be a thoroughly enjoyable read. The science detailed out is just outstanding that more than makes up for the awkward dialogues or under developed characters. Great read!
The story had a lot of promise but pretty soon after the start, it sort of whimpered into a very predictable narration. The apparent complexity of characters also gave out after the first few chapters as the motives were ‘pretty vanilla' at best. The science fiction aspect has no detail and is presented in a very generic and ambiguous manner.
Overall it's ‘okay'.
Some good (obvious) points but mostly it seems the author has taken a very strict social interaction of seminars and have applied it to general interactions. Also, over generalizing white people. People of color are mostly aware of the systematic racism and how progressive whites play a role into that through cultural appropriation etc, so the audience is mostly white (author also says so).
Author talks a lot about how white people defend themselves but in some parts it becomes ironic when author self congratulate herself on getting appropriate feedback from a person of color as if to negate some internal guilt. People of color got shit to do, they aren't just waiting patiently to give white people feedback all the time. Real word ain't a diversity seminar.
Part of subcontinent that thought it's better than the rest gets a reality check by Mr. M. Things don't go so well (read really really bad) for India, and blaming it on it's brother who left years ago to setup shop next door to find new ways of screwing things up, gets old pretty fast.
Author likes to believe India was secular and I like to believe I was loved by my family, unfortunately, decades have proved us both wrong.
But the book is really interesting, obviously opinionated but then anything interesting usually is. It tells a very coherent story which will keep you engaged (a tall order for a history book) and will be a resource for diving further into different topics on the subject.
90% of this book is just rants. Superfluous, nonsensical and illogical...rants. The rest of the 10% is the author trying to impress you by name dropping, his ‘clever' insights and how he is such a bundle of humility even though he is so much better than anyone else in the profession.
Yes, we need to think about chance and randomness in our lives and how our impression of reality is sometimes just plain wrong owing to that impression. But this is not the book to start with, seriously, at times you'll feel that apart from everything else it's just badly written.
Huxley describes a world so remote and far fetched from our own that I'm baffled how did he ever came up with such turn of events. People having sex like it's doing a status update, judging other people entirely on appearance and popping pills at the slightest hint of discomfort. If you think it bizarre and incomprehensible, you are not alone! The whole idea is ludicrous and not worth your carefully tucked categorized time.
I like anecdotes as much as the next person but a book full of just these self-proclaiming egoistical stories becomes too boring. Don't take me wrong, I respect Feynman and I quite enjoyed the first 100 pages but after that it was the same thing over and over again. How he is the ultimate genius in every way and how he could fake anything and sometimes even be an expert. But in many cases he was just being an ass disregarding the feelings of other people.