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3.21 AVERAGE
3.21 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
lighthearted
tense
medium-paced
content notes: mass extinction; violence by children; violence toward children; war; alcohol and drug use by children
A short way into this book I realised I was reading it out of anger and hope. Anger at what I was reading and desperate hope that I would get to the end and find that it all came together cohesively and made sense. It did not.
The first part of the book was a difficult read but worth pushing through because of that assumption that it would make sense and be justified later on in the story and to a certain degree that was true.
Spoilers from here on out:
It was agonising reading the chapters about the adult's plans and their vision for the children and how they went about handling the entire situation. It was terrible from the get go. You could see that they were making terrible judgements and decisions, but with the vague promise that this was a set up for the rest of the story: essentially that the rest of the book would be about how indeed those decisions had been terrible and here were the consequences.
However even without that assumption it was a bit of a slog to read. There were so many decisions that were bad, almost every one with no relief and generally very little justification or reasoning behind it. The decisions made by the adults often seemed nonsensical. The fact that this was apparently a global event and that every single nation was without fail following the same course of action and making the same terrible mistakes just doesn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense within the story and it doesn't make any sense from a real world point of view. It was bewildering and felt like a major plot hole. Why would this happen in such a way. How could it happen in such a way?
But you plod on through this section thinking ok, perhaps this is explained or dealt with later on. No. Not really.
For a few chapters we do see the consequences of those bad decisions start to occur. This is to be honest a bit of a relief and holds the potential to pull the narrative together and take it somewhere. However it is a lost potential.
Instead we deteriorate into what is essentially an entire third of the book that is made of nothing but violence and military porn. Again this is just nonsensical. There is very little actual reasoning or justification anywhere in the book for why this occurs. It doesn't fit with anything we know about kids, even allowing for unprecedented catastrophe of the scale of the setting. It is utterly perplexing that this level of violence and carnage seems to entrap all kids worldwide and that they all willingly if not enthusiastically want to take part and call it fun and games. It is only towards the end that there is a tiny nod to suggest that this didn't include 100% of the kids and that some didn't love it and find it fun or may even have found it not fun.
But just page after page of detailed descriptions of military weapons and vehicles in use and the death and violence it caused. over and over. I was skim reading pages, not because of a squeamishness, but just because it added so little to the story and quite frankly that level of military detail for anybody who isn't a dedicated enthusiast is just dull. My frustration only mounted when after this saga length detour into war and slaughter we don't learn anything new. I didn't feel I learned anything particularly about the world or the characters or the plot. It just happened. For a third of the book. Kids killing kids with military weapons in minute detail.
What I found sad was that the premise for the last few chapters of the book could have been genuinely intriguing and could have made for a great novel if it had been explored more deeply from the start. It's weird and implausible but is described in far for nuanced ways that literally anything preceding it. But we never get that far. We're just told that the great and bizarre country exchange happens. (oh but it is pointed out that a few hundred thousand more children died during the process, because at this point I can only assume that the author fetishes the death of large numbers of children, with the degree it is focussed on).
Insult of all insults to the reader comes at the end. We have struggled our way through the implausible the nonsensical, the ill thought out, the not-backed-up with real world or in context evidence, the superficial, the sweeping generalisations and get to the end of the last chapter with no explanation. No conclusion. No justification or revalation. That is until the epilogue.
This is the epilogue we were all warned about in high school English classes. The twist we were cautioned against using in our fiction for risk of dire tedium: "and then I woke up and it was all a dream". OK so that wasn't the actual epilogue. But it was the sci-fi equivalent of it and even then it was only half hearted - "and maybe it was a parallel dimension".
Right back in the first chapter we are given a school kid's explanation of "the butterfly effect theory" which is a simple basis for multiple dimensions based on every option in a choice we make being iterated in a different dimension. The explanation and dive into it is seriously no deeper than that throughout the whole book. And at the end it simply says "eh maybe that's true??" and implies that then maybe this is The Worst Timeline, where everybody made every bad decision and every bad outcome happened and somehow this occurred simultaneously and cohesively across the whole globe at once.
Oh yeah and now they live on Mars. Just thrown that in there for no apparent reason.
throw in some slightly off simplified national stereotypes and you just have a bad book. A really bad book. Can't recommend unless you like reading for spite and anger.
A short way into this book I realised I was reading it out of anger and hope. Anger at what I was reading and desperate hope that I would get to the end and find that it all came together cohesively and made sense. It did not.
The first part of the book was a difficult read but worth pushing through because of that assumption that it would make sense and be justified later on in the story and to a certain degree that was true.
Spoilers from here on out:
It was agonising reading the chapters about the adult's plans and their vision for the children and how they went about handling the entire situation. It was terrible from the get go. You could see that they were making terrible judgements and decisions, but with the vague promise that this was a set up for the rest of the story: essentially that the rest of the book would be about how indeed those decisions had been terrible and here were the consequences.
However even without that assumption it was a bit of a slog to read. There were so many decisions that were bad, almost every one with no relief and generally very little justification or reasoning behind it. The decisions made by the adults often seemed nonsensical. The fact that this was apparently a global event and that every single nation was without fail following the same course of action and making the same terrible mistakes just doesn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense within the story and it doesn't make any sense from a real world point of view. It was bewildering and felt like a major plot hole. Why would this happen in such a way. How could it happen in such a way?
But you plod on through this section thinking ok, perhaps this is explained or dealt with later on. No. Not really.
For a few chapters we do see the consequences of those bad decisions start to occur. This is to be honest a bit of a relief and holds the potential to pull the narrative together and take it somewhere. However it is a lost potential.
Instead we deteriorate into what is essentially an entire third of the book that is made of nothing but violence and military porn. Again this is just nonsensical. There is very little actual reasoning or justification anywhere in the book for why this occurs. It doesn't fit with anything we know about kids, even allowing for unprecedented catastrophe of the scale of the setting. It is utterly perplexing that this level of violence and carnage seems to entrap all kids worldwide and that they all willingly if not enthusiastically want to take part and call it fun and games. It is only towards the end that there is a tiny nod to suggest that this didn't include 100% of the kids and that some didn't love it and find it fun or may even have found it not fun.
But just page after page of detailed descriptions of military weapons and vehicles in use and the death and violence it caused. over and over. I was skim reading pages, not because of a squeamishness, but just because it added so little to the story and quite frankly that level of military detail for anybody who isn't a dedicated enthusiast is just dull. My frustration only mounted when after this saga length detour into war and slaughter we don't learn anything new. I didn't feel I learned anything particularly about the world or the characters or the plot. It just happened. For a third of the book. Kids killing kids with military weapons in minute detail.
What I found sad was that the premise for the last few chapters of the book could have been genuinely intriguing and could have made for a great novel if it had been explored more deeply from the start. It's weird and implausible but is described in far for nuanced ways that literally anything preceding it. But we never get that far. We're just told that the great and bizarre country exchange happens. (oh but it is pointed out that a few hundred thousand more children died during the process, because at this point I can only assume that the author fetishes the death of large numbers of children, with the degree it is focussed on).
Insult of all insults to the reader comes at the end. We have struggled our way through the implausible the nonsensical, the ill thought out, the not-backed-up with real world or in context evidence, the superficial, the sweeping generalisations and get to the end of the last chapter with no explanation. No conclusion. No justification or revalation. That is until the epilogue.
This is the epilogue we were all warned about in high school English classes. The twist we were cautioned against using in our fiction for risk of dire tedium: "and then I woke up and it was all a dream". OK so that wasn't the actual epilogue. But it was the sci-fi equivalent of it and even then it was only half hearted - "and maybe it was a parallel dimension".
Right back in the first chapter we are given a school kid's explanation of "the butterfly effect theory" which is a simple basis for multiple dimensions based on every option in a choice we make being iterated in a different dimension. The explanation and dive into it is seriously no deeper than that throughout the whole book. And at the end it simply says "eh maybe that's true??" and implies that then maybe this is The Worst Timeline, where everybody made every bad decision and every bad outcome happened and somehow this occurred simultaneously and cohesively across the whole globe at once.
Oh yeah and now they live on Mars. Just thrown that in there for no apparent reason.
throw in some slightly off simplified national stereotypes and you just have a bad book. A really bad book. Can't recommend unless you like reading for spite and anger.
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gun violence, Terminal illness, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, War
Moderate: Death of parent, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Deportation
Minor: Addiction, Confinement, Drug use, Xenophobia, Medical content, Grief, Pregnancy, Pandemic/Epidemic
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Skip reading this novel particularly if you expectations of the level of quality from The Three Body Problem. Instead, read an outline of the novel, and the author’s afterword, which is quite good.
I think I was expecting more to this. It was more of a documentary style thing than anything with characters you could get attached to, so I wasn't able to rate the story as highly as I'd hoped considering the idea at play. No romance, though. That was a plus.
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No