Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
This is, as all good sci-fi books, a story about people. I didn’t even come at it as sci fi despite the time travel component.
Strong theme of “just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should”
Pros:
- scientists who are also humans
- story time line encompasses end of czarist Russia to post USSR collapse Russia. Setting is Soviet Russia and US Philadelphia Soviet immigrant Little Russia
- small cast of characters
- easy to follow despite the time travel theme and jumps
Cons:
- despite 90% of the book being great, the ending fell a bit flat
- Chernobyl plot point left unresolved
Strong theme of “just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should”
Pros:
- scientists who are also humans
- story time line encompasses end of czarist Russia to post USSR collapse Russia. Setting is Soviet Russia and US Philadelphia Soviet immigrant Little Russia
- small cast of characters
- easy to follow despite the time travel theme and jumps
Cons:
- despite 90% of the book being great, the ending fell a bit flat
- Chernobyl plot point left unresolved
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
story concept was fun but so many plot holes and poorly advanced plot lines that it was hard to get through
It took me a long time to finish Atomic Anna. I love time travel stories, but I think I got a little lost with the jumping around in the first half of the book. Once I got to Raisa's part of the story it all clicked for me and I'm glad I stuck with it. I loved the complicated relationships between all the characters.
adventurous
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
So much promise, such a great premise and such a huge disappointment. I have no idea why I finished this book. I was already frustrated with it and felt it was dragging at 100 pages and yet I carried on to read all 433 pages. The ending was a disappointment too.
This book premise is catnip to me: time travel and Chernobyl. I love history and remember when Chernobyl happened. My interest was piqued even more after reading the fantastic nonfiction account Midnight in Chernobyl a a few years ago and watching the stellar HBO limited series Chernobyl. I'm also a sucker for time travel books and movies. But this book fell flat in so many ways. And it was sooooo slow.
The story is about three generations of women: Anna, a brilliant Soviet scientist whose work helps build the Chernobyl power plant, so of course she feels responsible when it melts down. Her daughter, Molly, lives in the U.S. and the two are estranged for reasons that become clearer. Raisa is Molly's daughter, an American teenager being raised by Molly's adoptive parents. I didn't mind that the book isn't linear, that it jumps around a lot from person to person and from different times and from the U.S. to the USSR. But I don't think this book knew what it wanted to be. Billed as "do we stop Chernobyl through time travel?" the book spent way too much time on the lives of the three women. And their lives just weren't that interesting. I thought the character development was weak, and I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, especially Anna and Molly, and how old they were at any given time. (Wait, is that the grandmother? Oh wait, was it the mom who was on drugs?)
Anna, the grandmother, is not that likable and the reasons why she hates her ex-husband, Yasha (Molly's father), were weak and didn't really make sense to me. Molly grows up in the U.S. and leads a good life, although she is poor. But she's very naive, falls for a slick man, gets pregnant and then falls into a life of drugs. That all seemed too simple and after-school-specialish. Then, there's Raisa. While she's the most likable of the three women, she's a teenager in the book and suddenly it felt like I was reading an angsty YA book about Raisa's love life and anger toward her grandparents. Interspersed in all this is a lot of math and science about nuclear power and the drawing of the comic book, Atomic Anna, which isn't that exciting if you can't actually see the comic books.
Sometimes I wonder where editors are or why authors are given so much leeway. This book should have been pared down to about 300 pages and picked a focus and sped up. Do you want to be a story about three generations of women or a story about three family members who work together to develop time travel and stop Chernobyl? This author couldn't decide.
This book premise is catnip to me: time travel and Chernobyl. I love history and remember when Chernobyl happened. My interest was piqued even more after reading the fantastic nonfiction account Midnight in Chernobyl a a few years ago and watching the stellar HBO limited series Chernobyl. I'm also a sucker for time travel books and movies. But this book fell flat in so many ways. And it was sooooo slow.
The story is about three generations of women: Anna, a brilliant Soviet scientist whose work helps build the Chernobyl power plant, so of course she feels responsible when it melts down. Her daughter, Molly, lives in the U.S. and the two are estranged for reasons that become clearer. Raisa is Molly's daughter, an American teenager being raised by Molly's adoptive parents. I didn't mind that the book isn't linear, that it jumps around a lot from person to person and from different times and from the U.S. to the USSR. But I don't think this book knew what it wanted to be. Billed as "do we stop Chernobyl through time travel?" the book spent way too much time on the lives of the three women. And their lives just weren't that interesting. I thought the character development was weak, and I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, especially Anna and Molly, and how old they were at any given time. (Wait, is that the grandmother? Oh wait, was it the mom who was on drugs?)
Anna, the grandmother, is not that likable and the reasons why she hates her ex-husband, Yasha (Molly's father), were weak and didn't really make sense to me. Molly grows up in the U.S. and leads a good life, although she is poor. But she's very naive, falls for a slick man, gets pregnant and then falls into a life of drugs. That all seemed too simple and after-school-specialish. Then, there's Raisa. While she's the most likable of the three women, she's a teenager in the book and suddenly it felt like I was reading an angsty YA book about Raisa's love life and anger toward her grandparents. Interspersed in all this is a lot of math and science about nuclear power and the drawing of the comic book, Atomic Anna, which isn't that exciting if you can't actually see the comic books.
Sometimes I wonder where editors are or why authors are given so much leeway. This book should have been pared down to about 300 pages and picked a focus and sped up. Do you want to be a story about three generations of women or a story about three family members who work together to develop time travel and stop Chernobyl? This author couldn't decide.