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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
inspiring
reflective
slow-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
adventurous
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
A very engaging enviro-punk read. The quirky characters kept me engaged across three generations. I love the hopeful notes and that it isn’t grim-dark. It’s super imaginative but grounded at the same time.
medium-paced
This book is so dumb. Children write more books thoughtful, in-depth stories. So silly. The blurb on the back of the book covers only the first 140 pages, then the book turn into a boring thoughtless mess. Let’s send people to FLY around and figure out a continent covering train system when many of the actually fucking characters can fly or have access to flight????? So silly.
adventurous
challenging
dark
inspiring
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This year has already been a banner year, having read the best fantasy novel, now have added what may be the beset sci-fi novel to cross my path in ... well, ever? Newitz may very well leave their day job as a science writer/journalist in favor of fiction if you ask me. In their afterward Newitz expands on the thought experiment that prompted the premise of Terraformers, and thanks a huge supporting cast of experts and colleagues who helped craft the world in which the story evolves. Oh, and evolves is correct, this is no mere moment in time tale of conflict. Newitz imagines a world where, thanks to the genetic engineering, the protagonists live for centuries, if not millennia, as they must because the task of terraforming a hostile planet into one habitable by h. sapiens, as well as the many more species populating this story, takes that kind of time. Many years ago a lit professor spent a fair amount of time discussing the vagaries of extrapolative v. speculative sci-fi, and it's through this lens I have considered all the various books and movies and shows I've consumed in all the years since. Perhaps Terraformers is the best extrapolative sci-fi i've read. Perhaps The Expanse series rates as best speculative? Perhaps that line between the two cannot be strictly defined. Where really does one step beyond extrapolation into speculation? In any case, this novel is BRILLIANT! The premise initially reminded me of David Brin's Uplift series, albeit those really tend to the fantastical speculative realm, much like Star Trek and many of the intra-galactic space operas of the genre, with FTL travel being as normal as a drive on I95, and habitable plants and species occupying them being as common as finding humans living down the block. Newitz imagines a world where humans have indeed spread across the stars, but not finding anyone else there, have crafted new ways to define life, and person and create the space for them to live. The novel takes place almost entirely on the E planet of the Sask system, therefore Sask-E is the planet, colloquially called Sasky by the residents. I would not complain if Newitz returned to his universe over and over again, exploring the myriad ways the peoples of their imagination live/love/work/play across all the various worlds.
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death
Mmmm…no. This book was written for a very specific reader and it’s not me. The characters and the form were purposefully estranged (think a robot with two consciousnesses named Hellfire&Crisp that marries an android door named Jaguar) in a way that made them hypothetically interesting, but actually just confusing. I felt like every scene needed a ton of background information to make it make sense. It was like reading a textbook on creative governance and problem-solving, but with more flying sentient moose and more sex. And the whole thing ended up being rather saccharine and anti-climactic.
hopeful
inspiring
fast-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:
Complicated
I watched a talk with Annalee Newitz and Becky Chambers after the election, which alerted me to Newitz's work and oh, I'm so very glad for that. This book is a delicious, hopeful marvel. If you want to envision a future full of coalition democracy in all its messy slowness, a world where technology enhances connection rather than serves as distraction, where tech is bio-based and carbon neutral, where the definitions of personhood are capacious, where challenges, yes, happen, and nothing is perfect, but a coalition of people, from cats to trains to naked mole rats, are fighting to be free, then this book, this is the book you need to read.