Reviews

This one is incredibly difficult for me to review. I’ve read several other reviews and feel as though I read a completely different book than everyone else. Almost every review I read seemed to take it as a sad ending and none mention Rachel. I’ve said before that I am a naively optimistic person, sometimes to a fault, but it seemed to me that there was a message of hope at the end. The powers of the world make their usual stupid mistakes and everyone suffers, but (to steal from another writer) life finds a way.

I think it’s hard for people to let go of the idea that humans are the peak of evolution. Religion (especially the one starring in this book) mostly teaches that we are the best and most beloved of Gods creation. So if mankind fails/destroys itself, there’s no point in anything existing afterwards. But history and evolution show that nothing ever stays stagnant. I think many people view the end of this book as the end of the world, but it’s just another beginning. Calamities have happened multiple times on this planet and each time has pushed life to the brink. But then it pushes back. I think that’s what both Rachel and Joseph represent. New beginnings stemming from another “end”.

This in no way is meant to undermine the importance of us trying our best to NOT destroy the world as we know it. I personally don’t want to be here for the extinction of my own species. I just don’t see our extinction as something we can escape from, no matter how far down the line.

The bits that really dropped the rating for me were that there really isn’t any resolution of Benjamin/Lazarus. Is he still wandering? Did he finally get his wish? The golden rule: introduce an immortal hermit at the beginning of your story, you better use that immortal hermit in the third act. Instead he sort of just disappears. I understand he’s based on the myth/legend of The Wandering Jew, but was hoping there would be more to the character than an ambiguous petering off.

I also had a lot of qualms with the discussion over euthanasia. I don’t mind having different opinions, the author can have his characters believe whatever he wants, but the preachiness of it took me completely out of the story. It became a personal lecture from the author rather than a personal belief of the character. Odd considering I felt the author did a brilliant job throughout the rest of the book at keeping his personal bias veiled in the storytelling. So much so, that he had this hard atheist siding with the monks much of the time. 😅 Zerchi literally TELLING the woman what she can’t do with her own body and child despite her believing it’s what’s best, coupled with the petitioners outside the clinic, etc. It all felt too familiar and I most definitely wasn’t comfortable with Miller implying the monk was in the right.

All in all, I think the book is definitely worthy of its status as an award winning SF classic. I think if it hadn’t have been for the few pitfalls and the constant use of Latin, I may have actually rated it a 4. I found out there’s a “sequel” but may or may not pick it up.

linguana's review against another edition

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challenging reflective slow-paced

4.0

jaimekaya's review

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3.0

I would give this book a 3.5. I absolutely loved the first story but then the rest of the book was a slog to get through.

I loved the themes and the idea that humans will destroy themselves over and over. The writing is technically very good, but that doesn’t save it from being a bit boring to me.

I wanted to like this more. Perhaps I’ll give it a another chance again sometime to see if my opinion has changed.