SK
On some days I think this book is the best of the series and on other days I think it's Ender's Game. This book explores some philosophical ideas in ways that Ender's Game never does. The speech Ender gives as Speaker for Marcao still brings me to tears every time. However, Ender is a bit too perfect. He just walks into a room and instantly analyzes every person perfectly and immediately says the exact right words to changes the hearts and minds of those around him. I still love this book, but just like its predecessor, Ender's Game, I no longer hold with quite the same level of reverence.
The book is a first contact novel, told from the viewpoint of the aliens. We follow Ryo, who is a bit of an oddball that never quite felt like he fit in with normal Thranx society. Ryo hears rumors that a new intelligent species (which turn out to be humans) was discovered and the book relays his adventures attempting first to meet the aliens.I appreciate that the author didn't try to force another 200 pages into the book just to make it longer. I'm interested to read some more of the Humanx Commonwealth novels in the future and some more Alan Dean Foster in general.
I really loved this book with some major reservations. Overall, the story was thoroughly engaging. I have always enjoyed Niven's somewhat dry style. The Earth is struck by an almost world ending meteor. We see the lead up to the strike and then the slow recovery of civilization in one small area (Southern California). The major flaw is that the only group of black characters in the book just happen to become a roving band of cannibals. It's not unreasonable to think that some people might resort to cannibalism, but to make the only black characters the only cannibals... If you simply make this group a mixed group it in no way changes the overall story but makes it far less racist.
spoilers:
I was very intrigued by the setting in the Chinese cultural revolution. The story doesn't stay there for long unfortunately. I was very intrigued by the mystery that gets set up early where the universe ‘blinks'. I really had no idea how the author was going to pull off a satisfying explanation, but assumed they would bc of the amount of praise the book receives. Well I was wrong. I slogged through the middle 2/3 of the book to just be completely let down. The explanation is that it doesn't, its just a magic computer inside of proton or whatever. Just utterly stupid.
This is the second book by Greg Bear that I've read. The first was Blood Music which I loved. This book did not live up to my expectations unfortunately. It's just kind of boring. The characters have no personality. I couldn't even name them or tell you which character did which thing. Except for the religious US President. The ending is very exciting and by far the best part of the book. But then just a few pages later the ending is more or less undone. The Earth is destroyed, a select few are saved. They get put in cryogenic sleep and wake up to a brand new Earth built for them. I'll probably read book 2 at some point as I hear that its better, but I don't feel any urge to do so anytime soon.
I've read maybe a handful of books twice. And only one or two 3 times. I have read Ender's Game more than a dozen times (I've listened to the audiobook 2 or 3 times through). It is most definitely my favorite book of all time.
Update after 2023 re-read: This re-read was the first time that I felt the book wasn't a perfect 10/10. The book just doesn't hit the same way at 40 years old as it did when I was 10 or 20. It was still a very enjoyable book. Nobody writes characters quite like Card. He conveys and internal emotional life that maybe only Robert Charles Wilson and Robin Hobb can match.
This is quite possibly the best book I've read in 10 years. It's been on my list for a long time but I had put it off mostly because I thought it was going to be a technically dense book. It really wasn't at all or at least not more than many other books I've read.
If you are at all on the fence about this book, please stop putting it off. Its just fantastic. I took my time with the book, reading only 10 or 20 pages a day, mostly on my short lunch breaks. Its not action packed, definitely not a page turner. It's more measured. Slowly allowing the world to seep in.
Spoilers ahead*
I knew I was going to like the book from the opening few chapters. But I really fell in love with it starting with Nadia and Arkady's trip on the dirigible. Just this vast, open, unexplored land rolling away beneath them.
Michel's floating through each day in a deep depression. Ann's anguish at the taking of Mar's purity. John's rover trips with the Muslim workers. John's speech as the asteroid is brought down into the atmosphere. Frank, Nadia, Michel and Ann's harrowing ride next to the massive flooding canyon. And Frank! Taken by the raging flood as he saves the rest of them.
It's like this vast epic set piece. The planet itself is a character in this book in a way I've never felt in any other book. I've never read anything like it. The blurb on the back of the book by Arthur C. Clarke says, “A staggering book.” I couldn't have said it better myself.
[spoilers]
I really wanted to like this book. Two grandmasters of science fiction writing together. Clarke is one of my favorite author's of all time. I haven't read any of Pohl's solo works.
This book is somewhat interesting. It follows the life of Sri Lankan mathematician who ends up solving Fermat's Last Theorem. The problem is that the book doesn't seem to have any real point. The main character goes through life, some things happen. He gets kidnapped. He gets imprisoned. He solves a math problem while imprisoned. Aliens sort of show up. He has a daughter. She wins a medal at the olympics on the moon. He has a son. His son is an autistic savant. Aliens decide to leave us alone. He downloads his mind into a computer. Book ends.
Writing the list, it sounds like this book should have some really cool parts. But all of it falls flat. None of the events feel all that important or dramatic. And the book just sort of wanders around unfocused.
This book came highly reccomended, but it never really did it for me. The hero is a generic “badass”. The plot seems totally arbitrary in an attempt to keep the reader guessing.
The one saving grace of this book is its action sequences. They are fantastically done. So good in fact that they make an otherwise boring book reasonably enjoyable.
Minor Spoilers if you care about that.
This is the first Star Trek book I've read since I was a kid. First I need to say that despite all of its many, many flaws, I still found this book rather enjoyable. That said, if this book didn't take place in an already established universe with characters I already know and like, I likely would have put this book down after only a few chapters.
As a literary work, this book is not great. The writing is a bit clunky. And the characters feel pretty shallow. And the poker analogies are far too numerous. We get it. Captain Riker players poker (which he never once does in the book btw, you're just presumed to know this from the show), you don't need to make a reference to his poker face every single time he's in a conversation.
The plot is similar to a standard TNG episode. Nothing particularly interesting there. They try to make it feel different by throwing some new characters and species into the mix, but none of those characters or species are developed at all. They have no depth, they are just talking cardboard cut outs that presumably look different from other talking cardboard cut outs.
The action sequences near the end of the novel are fast paced and fun. The events allow the author to have Tuvok join the crew which is exciting. Mostly because this character already has depth established by the Voyager TV series, and because he was one of the few characters in the novel who felt like a real character. They also bring aboard the Reman Mekrikuk who helped Tuvok escape. I am very interested to see what they do with him. He is definitely the only new character that struck my interest. I hope they use him well in future novels.
You will definitely need to already enjoy Star trek to have any hope of enjoying this book. But if you do, you will find a fast paced, fun, light read that leaves open the potential for some interesting character development (Tuvok and Mekrikuk).
The first half of this book is incredibly interesting. Lots of common sense advice for store owners. Basically it boils down to always considering the experience of the shopper when organizing the sales floor or designing signage. But all of it very interesting and a little eye opening.
Unfortunately the second half of the book falls apart a little. The authors biggest flaw being that he seems to lack any understanding of how computer's work. He spends an entire chapter discussing how online shopping can't match up with in person shopping. Many of his critiques are reasonable but they fail to take into account that all it takes is a new piece of software or even just a minor edit of currently existing software to fix many of these problems. He also comes out of left field to bash online dating because people who use online dating lack the ‘courage' to meet people in the real world.
If the book had stuck to interesting and fun anecdotes about ‘The Science of Shopping' I think this book could have easily been a 4 or 5 star book. But it loses its way somewhere and never quite comes back to being as good as it could have been.