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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A very intriguing concept that you just have to keep reading about. It leads into the next book very well. This book is very detailed and dense, using the audio book helps complete this book quicker. The character development is easy to follow as well as the characters backstories.
trigger warnings for SA and SH!
trigger warnings for SA and SH!
Interesting concept, but too much swashbucklin' for me.
I read this 30 years ago as a teen-ager and remember liking it, so I thought I would give it a try again. It brought back all my memories of Farmer and why I ultimately stopped reading him:
* Pulpy writing, but not in a good way - wretched dialogue
* Over-obsessed with sex, pornography, and extreme violence
* Great ideas but an inability to create an engaging plot
* Pulpy writing, but not in a good way - wretched dialogue
* Over-obsessed with sex, pornography, and extreme violence
* Great ideas but an inability to create an engaging plot
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
1.5 stars
The epitome of great concept, piss-poor execution, To Your Scattered Bodies Go starts out strong: all of humanity, the billions of humans and proto-humans that have ever lived on Earth, wake up to find themselves resurrected on the banks of a seemingly endless river. Through the eyes of our protagonist, real-life Victorian adventurer Richard Burton, we seek to answer the pertinent question - who put them there? What a premise, what potential!
Maybe so, in the hands of a better writer. Instead, Farmer wastes what could have been a fascinating opportunity to explore the interactions of thousands of cultures separated by time and space. I think he just didn't put the thought and research in - 4th century Frisians aren't really differentiated from 17th century Choctaws, who are surprisingly similar to 20th century Muscovites.
Farmer sets up a scenario where he could cast literally any figure from human history, but whenever they are introduced they appear as shallow caricatures. No depth is attempted, nothing to really surprise the reader. The way he introduces well-known characters is so half-arsed: he typically has one of his protagonists spot a famous figure and spontaneously spout a biographical summary that could have been gleaned from any encyclopedia, seemingly for the benefit of nobody but the reader. Clearly Farmer subscribes to the school of 'tell, not show'.
For all the multitudes of cultures milling about in the novel, the interactions seem to take place though a lens that is jarringly late-C20th and Western. For one, the universal luxury goods are comprised of whisky, cigars and lipstick. Encounters between characters are tailored toward 20th century liberal sensibilities, abandoning any realism: so we have in one case a Victorian factory owner berated by one of his poor factory girls who apparently needed an afterlife environment to unleash her inner Simone de Beauvoir.
Farmer also has woman trouble, in that he can't write a convincing woman to save his life. Every female character is thoroughly two dimensional and merely incidental to the plot. They are unironically treated little better than luxury items themselves, and their portrayal as either lusty wenches or nagging shrews is not only offensive but boring.
Finally, Farmer we'll and truly runs out of steam in the second half of the novel. Having established is fantastical and intriguing setup, he realised he had a plot to drive, and so ends up tacking on some nonsense about a (vaguely justified) river adventure with Hermann Goering as the recurring antagonist. I think there's some giants in there too.
So in conclusion this was a clunky puerile mess, though I'll give it 1.5 stars purely because a) the premise is great and maybe a reboot is in order and b) it's mercifully short.
The epitome of great concept, piss-poor execution, To Your Scattered Bodies Go starts out strong: all of humanity, the billions of humans and proto-humans that have ever lived on Earth, wake up to find themselves resurrected on the banks of a seemingly endless river. Through the eyes of our protagonist, real-life Victorian adventurer Richard Burton, we seek to answer the pertinent question - who put them there? What a premise, what potential!
Maybe so, in the hands of a better writer. Instead, Farmer wastes what could have been a fascinating opportunity to explore the interactions of thousands of cultures separated by time and space. I think he just didn't put the thought and research in - 4th century Frisians aren't really differentiated from 17th century Choctaws, who are surprisingly similar to 20th century Muscovites.
Farmer sets up a scenario where he could cast literally any figure from human history, but whenever they are introduced they appear as shallow caricatures. No depth is attempted, nothing to really surprise the reader. The way he introduces well-known characters is so half-arsed: he typically has one of his protagonists spot a famous figure and spontaneously spout a biographical summary that could have been gleaned from any encyclopedia, seemingly for the benefit of nobody but the reader. Clearly Farmer subscribes to the school of 'tell, not show'.
For all the multitudes of cultures milling about in the novel, the interactions seem to take place though a lens that is jarringly late-C20th and Western. For one, the universal luxury goods are comprised of whisky, cigars and lipstick. Encounters between characters are tailored toward 20th century liberal sensibilities, abandoning any realism: so we have in one case a Victorian factory owner berated by one of his poor factory girls who apparently needed an afterlife environment to unleash her inner Simone de Beauvoir.
Farmer also has woman trouble, in that he can't write a convincing woman to save his life. Every female character is thoroughly two dimensional and merely incidental to the plot. They are unironically treated little better than luxury items themselves, and their portrayal as either lusty wenches or nagging shrews is not only offensive but boring.
Finally, Farmer we'll and truly runs out of steam in the second half of the novel. Having established is fantastical and intriguing setup, he realised he had a plot to drive, and so ends up tacking on some nonsense about a (vaguely justified) river adventure with Hermann Goering as the recurring antagonist. I think there's some giants in there too.
So in conclusion this was a clunky puerile mess, though I'll give it 1.5 stars purely because a) the premise is great and maybe a reboot is in order and b) it's mercifully short.
Lots of interesting implications and I was not left with a sense of it being over-complicated or boring. This first volume ends pretty abruptly, so I plan on reading the second. As a stand-alone read, however, there is basically no resolution. Still, a fantastically intriguing premise.
This won a Hugo???
I didn't care what happened to the main character, Richard Burton. Actually, I didn't care what happened to *any* of the characters.
The concept was mildly interesting, but depressing. Basically man doesn't change after being resurrected. Murder, slavery, rape, torture will not disappear.
The UTTERLY WORST aspect of the book was that it had a supremely crappy to-be-continued ending. In other words, it HAD NO ENDING!! I HATE books like that.
Fortunately, a kind soul on Goodreads said this book is the best in the series and the Big Reveal is uninteresting. So now I won't torture myself by getting the rest in the series.
I didn't care what happened to the main character, Richard Burton. Actually, I didn't care what happened to *any* of the characters.
The concept was mildly interesting, but depressing. Basically man doesn't change after being resurrected. Murder, slavery, rape, torture will not disappear.
The UTTERLY WORST aspect of the book was that it had a supremely crappy to-be-continued ending. In other words, it HAD NO ENDING!! I HATE books like that.
Fortunately, a kind soul on Goodreads said this book is the best in the series and the Big Reveal is uninteresting. So now I won't torture myself by getting the rest in the series.
Not entirely sure how I feel about this one. I really enjoyed the first 20 pages and it got into a rhythm in the last 80 pages or so, but I was a bit bored with everything in the middle. The book starts off with an intriguing setup with a big mystery, but most of the book doesn’t have anything to do with the mystery of what’s actually going on. Instead, most of the book is focused on all of these historical characters (who you’ve never heard of) surviving and dealing with a mix of cultures and times. That could be interesting, but the main character (in fact most of the characters) are just awful racists and sexists to the point where it was unenjoyable to read. I get that they’re historical characters so their attitudes are probably not inaccurate, but I don’t care to sympathize with this guy when he sucks so much. Thankfully in the final third there were some creative and clever plot developments and we started learning more about the big mystery which got me interested again because it was a bit more sci-fi than the rest, but I wouldn’t say it was a particularly satisfying conclusion (or really much of a conclusion at all). Don’t feel much need to continue this series. Just read Varley’s Gaea trilogy instead for a similar theme but much more fun.