Echopraxia

I loved Blindsight so much I think of it as a top 3 scifi favorite ever for me and even wrote the author to say how much I loved it (he answered, is a great guy and with a great sense of humor, so military I am surprised he is not one of us, the military). I compared it in its review somewhat to Reynolds, but said Watts was better by being focused.
Well, in this one he goes full Reynolds,meaning a lot of extremely imaginative hard sf background, carried forward by a creaking, overburdened narrative chassis. It starts great and then just stalls for half the book. When it picks up again, I was already bored and not invested in the story any more.
So. Probably a 5/5 for hard scifi fans, and for engineers. More of a 3/5 for those looking for a more intense and mission-focused story, like myself.
PS. It is not Blindsight 2. It happens in parallel. Good to know, because to many that came as a disappointing surprise.

Some truly provocative ideas about consciousness, identity and the future. The execution however was lacking and could not possibly compare to the intellectual masterpiece that was [b: Blindsight 48484 Blindsight (Firefall, #1) Peter Watts https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386924412s/48484.jpg 47428] . At times it felt like I was reading a work of fan fiction of the first book, however it was still worth it.Now I'm off to drown my existential dread with alcohol.

Grosse déception avec ce roman qui complète “Blindsight” que j'ai lu juste avant. Le problème, c'est que ce roman possède les inconvénients de Blindsight (les longueurs, les digressions pas toujours intéressantes) sans en avoir les qualités. Le récit m'a ennuyé comme rarement un roman le fait, les personnages m'ont laissé indifférent, et je n'étais même pas impatient de découvrir la fin. Quelle déception.

I think I'm going to have to read this one again to get the most out of it, just like its predecessor, Blindsight. Definitely worth a read if you're interested in philosophy of mind or neurobiology (and you enjoy your science sometimes turned into fiction).

Two comments, from the first read:
1. Like some other books I love, I wish the author would actually tease out fewer concepts in more depth. This thing has vampires and zombies, god-as-a-virus, mind-control from light-years away, various kinds of hacked brains/consciousness(es), and more–any of which could have been the kernel of a great book.

2. I hope Watts has read Daniel Dennett's “Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting”, because it contains myriad answers to some of the questions he raises regarding free will (especially those in the back matter).