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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
(Note, for disclosure: I am acquainted with the author, but I purchased this book of my own accord and was not asked to write a review.)
This book felt like a great work of imagination. It spans a huge variety of settings (one per chapter), each of which is vastly different than the last. But it is also held together by many similarities in each one, and by a fair amount of repetition. The book is, in large part, composed of the two protagonists going to a world, followed by a brief explanation of said world and its intelligent inhabitants, followed by the protagonists' efforts to control the damage done to the world by the crisis that sets off the story (albeit sometimes not precisely in that order), with their overarching goal being to find other surviving members of their species and to discover what caused the crisis in the first place. The dialogue, as well, shows little variation, as most of the characters speak in similar ways. Most of the effort is focused on the technical---how each species co-evolved, how this affected their development as intelligent beings, how they interact with their peculiar worlds with their varied bodies and senses---and the philosophical. Only toward the end does this formula change appreciably, when there is an appropriate escalation toward a climax.
It worked fine for me, but, I admit, less as a story and more for the intellectual exercises it offered. Its philosophy is heavily reinforced by the aforementioned repetition. That said, it isn't emotionless; the protagonists both continuously struggle with their roles as saviors of the universe, and with damage that the inciting crisis inflicted on their minds and therefore their abilities to deal with everyone's problems. They have personal struggles as well---lost friends, lovers, being witness to untold devastation, struggling against their innate instincts at times. So there is a lot here, and it's well-told when it occurs. Reading the entire book also put me into a headspace in which the alien began to seem perfectly normal, an effect I have to assume was intended.
It is hard to know who to recommend this book to. I suspect the average reader will be put off by said alienness, and the protagonists' explicit sexuality, and all sorts of other things that are mostly impossible to find in more mainstream fiction. The repetition in the narrative might also become boring for certain kinds of readers. But I suppose the average reader is really who should be giving it a try, something more or less explicitly commented on in the manuscript itself at one point. In any case, I bought the whole series as a collected e-book, so I will be reading the rest over time.
This book felt like a great work of imagination. It spans a huge variety of settings (one per chapter), each of which is vastly different than the last. But it is also held together by many similarities in each one, and by a fair amount of repetition. The book is, in large part, composed of the two protagonists going to a world, followed by a brief explanation of said world and its intelligent inhabitants, followed by the protagonists' efforts to control the damage done to the world by the crisis that sets off the story (albeit sometimes not precisely in that order), with their overarching goal being to find other surviving members of their species and to discover what caused the crisis in the first place. The dialogue, as well, shows little variation, as most of the characters speak in similar ways. Most of the effort is focused on the technical---how each species co-evolved, how this affected their development as intelligent beings, how they interact with their peculiar worlds with their varied bodies and senses---and the philosophical. Only toward the end does this formula change appreciably, when there is an appropriate escalation toward a climax.
It worked fine for me, but, I admit, less as a story and more for the intellectual exercises it offered. Its philosophy is heavily reinforced by the aforementioned repetition. That said, it isn't emotionless; the protagonists both continuously struggle with their roles as saviors of the universe, and with damage that the inciting crisis inflicted on their minds and therefore their abilities to deal with everyone's problems. They have personal struggles as well---lost friends, lovers, being witness to untold devastation, struggling against their innate instincts at times. So there is a lot here, and it's well-told when it occurs. Reading the entire book also put me into a headspace in which the alien began to seem perfectly normal, an effect I have to assume was intended.
It is hard to know who to recommend this book to. I suspect the average reader will be put off by said alienness, and the protagonists' explicit sexuality, and all sorts of other things that are mostly impossible to find in more mainstream fiction. The repetition in the narrative might also become boring for certain kinds of readers. But I suppose the average reader is really who should be giving it a try, something more or less explicitly commented on in the manuscript itself at one point. In any case, I bought the whole series as a collected e-book, so I will be reading the rest over time.