Reviews

That was painful to finish. Sure there were tons of ideas. But by the end I figure I was getting at most a third. Absolutely brilliant, but also totally overwhelming. Probably one of the strongest statements on the future evolution of humanity and I basically felt too dumb to follow it. Maybe a good candidate for a re-read. Also an awful lot of the book dealt with faith in science and the science of faith. And the nature of religion and religious ceremonies. And maybe a bit about magic and physics. And of course zombies. And vampires. Exhausting.

jwpeddle's review against another edition

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2.0

Much like the first book, Blindsight, a huge amount of the appeal to me is via the thought experiments baked into the narrative. Peter Watts clearly has deep interest and curiousity about the fluidity of consciousness and identity, and I'll continue reading him so I can join the conversation. That said, the narrative is a bit of a mess. I found myself eager to finish the book so I could read some plot summaries, and learn character motivations. Peter Watts seems somewhat aware of this problem, but he's also quick to dismiss confusion around things he "clearly stated in the book". Nothing is "clearly stated". The contrast between meandering prose and important plot is non-existent, so it's difficult to remain lucid enough to latch onto important bits.

I'm looking forward to reading Blindsight and Echopraxia again, but I wouldn't recommend to anybody that isn't deeply fascinated by the science of consciousness.

jm_donellan's review against another edition

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5.0

An incredibly difficult but hugely rewarding hard sci-fi book. My head's still spinning and I had to pause whilst reading it to look up a bunch of concepts and terms, but the writing is excellent and it makes the thick swathes of esoteric terminology well worth wading through. Certainly one of the best sci-fi books I've read in some time.

ary31415's review against another edition

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5.0

The notes and references alone is worth reading, truly fascinating

timeswitch's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious 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? It's complicated

3.5

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