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sirlancelot2021's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
medea_jade's review against another edition
5.0
This book is a slow burn that leads to a profound ending that brought me to tears. The years later and I still think about it regularly.
gavreads's review against another edition
3.0
Synopsis
It takes an alien race to show us what humanitiy truly is. This is the irony faced by a group of friends whose lives are changed forever when the mysterious alien race known as the Kethani come to Earth bearing a dubious but amazing gift: immortality.
Analyse/Comments/Thoughts
Kethani is a reality based what if? Quite different for a sci-fi story. Brown meditates, through a series of linked tales, on the affect on immortality on the human race, but its not just immortality we’re offered, it’s the chance to escape Earth and see the stars.
And what does humanity do with this gift? Sit in the pub. A lot. And this is the conflict I’m having with this novel. It’s a small-scale drama with a backdrop of something larger and life changing. I can’t help feeling a little disappointed.
Here’s why. Brown presents a series of interesting voices and takes on the how, even with promise of resurrection on death, we still need routine and we make connections that we hold on to. He examines our feelings around death. And all round does a good job.
But he leaves the aliens, well, alien. They’re almost as mysterious at the start as they are at the end. They have enemies but there is not explanation of who they might be or what the conflict is. They have amazing technology but we only get to see it from the surface.
Though the aliens aren’t the focus of this tale. We are. And Brown chooses a narrow focus with a reason so he can explore the wider implications for a group of friends of the aliens arrival. There is a doctor, a teacher, a priest, dry-stone-waller, in other words a mix of intelligent and insightful views to draw from. And there are some impressive insights about how we grow apart when we don’t try and how death can be a freedom as well as a devastation as well as how religion can or can’t transform to encompass new ideas.
On a technical level there is a couple of annoying traits. Everything seems to take place after a heavy snowfall and descriptions are sometimes repeated and some characters are more fleshed out than others. Some of these problems are routed in the fact that some of the sections have previously been short stories and could have been fixed I think with a little more polishing. This might seem picky but I did get drawn out of the story at a few times because of them.
Summary
I’m left with feeling that there was the potential to do a lot more with the alien material especially as it’s unlikely to have a sequel. But if it did it would have to be a different beast.
Putting aside my want to have more alien insight. Brown shows a skill for examining the human condition and how we look at death in an unconventional sci-fi story. It’s an insightful take that’s well worth reading but it might leave you wanting more, which isn’t really a bad thing, is it?
It takes an alien race to show us what humanitiy truly is. This is the irony faced by a group of friends whose lives are changed forever when the mysterious alien race known as the Kethani come to Earth bearing a dubious but amazing gift: immortality.
Analyse/Comments/Thoughts
Kethani is a reality based what if? Quite different for a sci-fi story. Brown meditates, through a series of linked tales, on the affect on immortality on the human race, but its not just immortality we’re offered, it’s the chance to escape Earth and see the stars.
And what does humanity do with this gift? Sit in the pub. A lot. And this is the conflict I’m having with this novel. It’s a small-scale drama with a backdrop of something larger and life changing. I can’t help feeling a little disappointed.
Here’s why. Brown presents a series of interesting voices and takes on the how, even with promise of resurrection on death, we still need routine and we make connections that we hold on to. He examines our feelings around death. And all round does a good job.
But he leaves the aliens, well, alien. They’re almost as mysterious at the start as they are at the end. They have enemies but there is not explanation of who they might be or what the conflict is. They have amazing technology but we only get to see it from the surface.
Though the aliens aren’t the focus of this tale. We are. And Brown chooses a narrow focus with a reason so he can explore the wider implications for a group of friends of the aliens arrival. There is a doctor, a teacher, a priest, dry-stone-waller, in other words a mix of intelligent and insightful views to draw from. And there are some impressive insights about how we grow apart when we don’t try and how death can be a freedom as well as a devastation as well as how religion can or can’t transform to encompass new ideas.
On a technical level there is a couple of annoying traits. Everything seems to take place after a heavy snowfall and descriptions are sometimes repeated and some characters are more fleshed out than others. Some of these problems are routed in the fact that some of the sections have previously been short stories and could have been fixed I think with a little more polishing. This might seem picky but I did get drawn out of the story at a few times because of them.
Summary
I’m left with feeling that there was the potential to do a lot more with the alien material especially as it’s unlikely to have a sequel. But if it did it would have to be a different beast.
Putting aside my want to have more alien insight. Brown shows a skill for examining the human condition and how we look at death in an unconventional sci-fi story. It’s an insightful take that’s well worth reading but it might leave you wanting more, which isn’t really a bad thing, is it?
jess_zf's review against another edition
3.0
I liked that this book was sci fi but on a psychological level. Made me want a Tuesday night pub group. And a rest.
jlynnelseauthor's review against another edition
3.0
I found the concept quite interesting. It was the story of a group of friends and how they are affected by the choice of immortality. This book I thought was very good, and at times I could not put it down. Unfortunetly, it never amounted to much. There was no grand finale or explanation behind the reasons humaity was given the choice of immortality. I was also disappointed that the only religious points of view were crazy extreme Catholics. There was one priest and a "not so good" Buddhist, but overall, I felt that more of a Lutheran view would have been a good path to explore. The individual stories were interesting, but the ending was disappointing without many answers to the entire alien race offering immortality as a whole. But maybe I've just watched too many episodes of V and other sci fi alien oppresion movies...
brixdan's review against another edition
3.0
I found this book to be a really interesting concept, but I was more interested in finding out the reasons behind the aliens choices than the stories of the characters. This may be the fact that this book is a string of short stories only cohesed by the interludes. It also, for no particular reason, bothered me that despite the fact that the book takes place over 15 or 20 years, every story that was told in the book took place in the winter. That really annoyed me for some reason, as if the author was in winter when he wrote all of those and couldn't imagine anything interesting happening during the spring, fall, or summer. Other than that it was a lovely calming read. I was, however, looking for the 'catch' the entire novel and was a little disappointed in the ending because of that.
Definitely worth reading.
Definitely worth reading.
chramies's review against another edition
4.0
A low-key post-disaster novel where the disaster really isn't one, a bit like a murder mystery where there is no murder ... but even there there can be a mystery, and here there is a sufficiency of character and incident, even too many narrative viewpoints I felt. The continuing mystery of the Kethani themselves - what do they want, why are they doing this, what do they look like - is unsolved and there is even a hint at a secondary plot regarding Kethani 'spies' among us who only seem to be human but aren't. Are the 'returned' really who they claim - or Kethani appearing to be them, as we know already that the K. can appear human?
The narrators are mainly linked by drinking in the same pub (and almost all the significant characters are male although they have significant relationships with women) - and a certain brew by a certain Northern brewery gets mentioned quite a lot. Made me want to go to the pub, but in a nice way.
The narrators are mainly linked by drinking in the same pub (and almost all the significant characters are male although they have significant relationships with women) - and a certain brew by a certain Northern brewery gets mentioned quite a lot. Made me want to go to the pub, but in a nice way.
cjrecordvt's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting take on First Contact, told via a series of vignettes, extending from contact to significantly later, and portrays one possibility for societal change in light of advanced technology and species knowledge.
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