Reviews

Central Station by Lavie Tidhar

lkrivitz's review against another edition

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3.0

Beautiful prose and great cyberpunk setting, but the characters did not really engage my interest. May be due to the fact that this was a bunch of short stories reworked into a novel.

yuyine's review against another edition

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3.25

Central station est un roman où le personnage principal, la ville elle-même, se dessine à travers 13 récits liés mais indépendants à la fois qui dessinent la fresque de ce lieu, de sa vie multiculturelle, de son histoire mais aussi de l’univers immense où elle s’inscrit. Foisonnant, palpitant et vertigineux, le récit manquait malheureusement pour moi d’un fil rouge plus solide où d’une émotion plus forte pour ne pas me laisser de côté. Je vous conseille cependant sa lecture mais seulement si votre fatigue n’est pas trop intense car il nécessite de s’accrocher un peu.

Critique complète sur yuyine.be (https://yuyine.be/review/book/central-station)!

ohclaire's review against another edition

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4.0

I really like the structure of this novel! It reads more like a short story collection, but the througharc is the world

annknee's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

2.5

kraeberry's review against another edition

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medium-paced

3.0

erinflight's review against another edition

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4.0

This is a strange, dreamlike story about a sci-fi future populated by decaying robots, machine-human minds, information vampires, and mechanical gods humans created for themselves.

The chapters skip around, both in time and space, with different narrators. I had trouble keeping track of the names, so I think I missed some of the connections between the different narratives. But, either way, they mostly don't tie together directly, and a lot of the threads don't really ever form complete stories.

This isn't a plot driven book. It's more of a collection of moments and individual people's stories, in a bittersweet version of the future.

I liked it, I'm not sure I followed it particularly well.

None of the individual ideas within the book struck me as particularly original (which is true of the majority of sci-fi), but the combination felt genuinely fresh for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.

innovatorium's review

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1.0

The book does not have a narrative or a plot. It simply describes, in too much laborious detail, people in a futuristic society. It has the feel of a book created from many short stories, unsuccessfully merged into a book, like Frankenstein was created from different body parts. This is actually indicated at the end of the book where extended copyright to most of the chapters are described.

The praise that other authors have given the book does not match the content, so I wonder how much of it they have actually read, or if they simply got commission from the publisher to write positive reviews.

The author does have some skill in writing descriptions and has managed to conjure an interesting society. This alone would have qualified for two stars. But the lack of any plot and disregard for what makes a story interesting makes this a book that cannot be recommended.

zanosgood's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

kayemme's review against another edition

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slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

humanwave's review

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2.0

This is too well realised a world for nothing to be happening in it.