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catcouch's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
elzabetg's review against another edition
3.0
I didn't get it. Like Robson but this was...unsatisfying and by the end I just didn't get it.
readingwithhippos's review against another edition
3.0
Natural History is a space opera, though it's fairly different from many others in the genre. For one thing, it's shorter, which means Robson has to fit a whole lot of science, politics, and (of course) history into just a few pages. Her brevity likely makes some readers happy and grateful that they don't have to wade through miles of scientific jargon, but it could frustrate those who like a little more explanation. I'm not saying I wish the book were 300 pages longer, but I did find some plot points and characters' decisions a little too pat, and was annoyed by some ends left loose.
It is pretty awesome, though, that the two most highly developed characters are female, and arguably both are minorities. Voyager Isol is one of the Forged, half-machine and half-human, basically a sentient spaceship equipped to travel massive interstellar distances with just her own body. Because all her mechanical spaceship parts are like organs of her body, the opening scene in which she is damaged by flying debris is fascinating—she feels real pain as her systems shut down and her engine fails. It's a really creative and effective way for Robson to establish that the Forged are human despite their machinelike aspect.
Isol is miraculously saved when a mysterious substance bonds with her failing engine and not only heals her, but makes her into a super-spacecraft that can travel anywhere in the universe instantly. No longer in her death throes, she explores a nearby Earthlike planet that looks like it once supported life. Isol returns to Earth, intent upon making the new planet a home and refuge for the Forged—a place where they won't be beholden to their human creators, where they will be able to live freely and make their own choices.
People back on Earth, human and Forged alike, aren't sure Isol is telling the truth about this new planet and want to proceed with caution. So they recruit professor of archaeology Zephyr Duquesne, a woman of color and fully human, to accompany Isol back to the mysterious planet for some exploration and analysis. I found Zephyr to be the most interesting and relatable character in the novel. She's out of her element and intimidated by space travel, but her fascination with extinct cultures is too strong for her to resist the opportunity. Who used to live on this faraway planet? And more importantly, what happened to them, that they left seemingly without a trace?
In addition to the Isol/Zephyr storyline, Robson includes sections that follow a strange guy named Corvax, who spends a lot of time in a dreamlike virtual reality, and several other political figures, both human and Forged. Maybe it's because I'm still not a seasoned sci-fi reader, but I found these sections a bit tedious and murky, and wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to get out of them. I was always glad to get back to a chapter that followed Isol and Zephyr.
This book is part of a series on my website, the Summer of Sci-Fi Challenge. You can find the full text of this review, more information about the Challenge, and many other book recommendations at www.readingwithhippos.com.
It is pretty awesome, though, that the two most highly developed characters are female, and arguably both are minorities. Voyager Isol is one of the Forged, half-machine and half-human, basically a sentient spaceship equipped to travel massive interstellar distances with just her own body. Because all her mechanical spaceship parts are like organs of her body, the opening scene in which she is damaged by flying debris is fascinating—she feels real pain as her systems shut down and her engine fails. It's a really creative and effective way for Robson to establish that the Forged are human despite their machinelike aspect.
Isol is miraculously saved when a mysterious substance bonds with her failing engine and not only heals her, but makes her into a super-spacecraft that can travel anywhere in the universe instantly. No longer in her death throes, she explores a nearby Earthlike planet that looks like it once supported life. Isol returns to Earth, intent upon making the new planet a home and refuge for the Forged—a place where they won't be beholden to their human creators, where they will be able to live freely and make their own choices.
People back on Earth, human and Forged alike, aren't sure Isol is telling the truth about this new planet and want to proceed with caution. So they recruit professor of archaeology Zephyr Duquesne, a woman of color and fully human, to accompany Isol back to the mysterious planet for some exploration and analysis. I found Zephyr to be the most interesting and relatable character in the novel. She's out of her element and intimidated by space travel, but her fascination with extinct cultures is too strong for her to resist the opportunity. Who used to live on this faraway planet? And more importantly, what happened to them, that they left seemingly without a trace?
In addition to the Isol/Zephyr storyline, Robson includes sections that follow a strange guy named Corvax, who spends a lot of time in a dreamlike virtual reality, and several other political figures, both human and Forged. Maybe it's because I'm still not a seasoned sci-fi reader, but I found these sections a bit tedious and murky, and wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to get out of them. I was always glad to get back to a chapter that followed Isol and Zephyr.
This book is part of a series on my website, the Summer of Sci-Fi Challenge. You can find the full text of this review, more information about the Challenge, and many other book recommendations at www.readingwithhippos.com.
miocyon's review against another edition
3.0
This suffered from the issues I have with a lot of sci-fi - some cool concepts and a story that starts out that then devolves into some vaguely spiritual conclusion, with some bad biology in this one to add to it.
She's an OK writer mechanically, although every once in a while there was a clunky phrase that stuck out like a sore thumb.
She's an OK writer mechanically, although every once in a while there was a clunky phrase that stuck out like a sore thumb.
shirezu's review
4.0
I really enjoyed this book and am so glad it's a standalone. Therefore I knew it would have at least some sense of closure before I started. The pace of the book keeps it from getting too bogged down in technical details but that doesn't mean it's shallow. With shades of [b:Leviathan Wakes|8855321|Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)|James S.A. Corey|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411013134s/8855321.jpg|13730452], [b:Lock In|21418013|Lock In (Lock In, #1)|John Scalzi|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1438701397s/21418013.jpg|26115712], and [b:Ilium|3973|Ilium (Ilium, #1)|Dan Simmons|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390894862s/3973.jpg|3185401], this book seamlessly welds a lot of different ideas and concepts together in one.
At times philosophical, political, technological, and a bit of straight-forward action/adventure I was quite impressed and look forward to trying more from this author. Definitely worth a try.
At times philosophical, political, technological, and a bit of straight-forward action/adventure I was quite impressed and look forward to trying more from this author. Definitely worth a try.
ikilegna's review
1.0
I could just not warm up to this book. The plot wasn't captivating enough and I struggled to keep up with all of the different characters, some of which I didn't even deem necessary. It did turn slightly more interesting towards the end. However, I don't believe I would've finished it if I didn't have to read it for uni.
cindywho's review against another edition
4.0
A cranky cyborg, engineered for interstellar travel, comes across a new technology and a new planet - finally - a chance to get away from the monkeys! The politics of the "unevolved" and the "forged" play out across the solar system while an historian is shipped out to determine if the planet has ever been occupied - in the belly of the cyborg ship. I sometimes had trouble keeping track of the characters - they could have been better defined - but was thrilled by a new and interesting story.
inti's review against another edition
2.0
DNF. I almost never DNF, but for some reason this one was just unreadable.
sadie_slater's review against another edition
2.0
As I've probably mentioned already, I've been making a conscious effort to read more SFF by women writers recently, and Justina Robson was someone I'd seen mentioned as being worth trying, so when I spotted this in the Oxfam bookshop last summer I thought I'd give it a try*.
Natual History is an exploration of ideas of transhumanism. It's set in a future where "the human race" has expanded to include the Forged, human minds in biological-mechanical hybrid bodies, some mimicking animals, others machines (two of the central characters are basically spaceships, one a solo exploration vessel and the other a cargo carrier). Even among the "Unevolved", many people have technological augmentations. There are longstanding tensions between the Forged and the Unevolved around the Forged's place in society, particularly those who may have outlived their original purpose (such as the vast terraformers who made the Moon and Mars habitable).
On top of this background, Robson adds a classic first contact story. Isol, a deep-space explorer, encounters a strange lump of "Stuff", apparently inert at first but which allows her to create an instantaneous travel engine, and then discovers a mysterious Earth-like planet which appears to be its origin, and the novel follows several characters as the human race attempts to understand the nature of the Stuff and deal with the consequences of its discovery.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. Partly this is because I really struggled with the worldbuilding; unlike when I read Too Like the Lightning and found it exhilarating to try to understand the strange new world Ada Palmer had created, reading Natural History felt like hard work. There was a lot of invented jargon, different types of Forged humans and institutions and processes and I really struggled to take it all in and make any sense of it at all. I also felt that the pacing wasn't quite right; it's quite a short book, at just under 400 pages, and there was a lot of setup to create a number of plot threads which all then seemed to be resolved very quickly, so I couldn't help feeling that it might have been better with more space to develop the story (or perhaps less setup; I definitely enjoyed the last hundred pages or so, once the plot really started moving, more than the start). Most of the characters feel very underdeveloped, and even the two who are given more time don't quite seem fully realised. This is a novel that's full of interesting ideas, but I didn't think the execution quite lived up to the concept.
*How many of my book reviews start "when I spotted this in the Oxfam bookshop"? Probably most of the ones that aren't reviews of Kindle books...
Natual History is an exploration of ideas of transhumanism. It's set in a future where "the human race" has expanded to include the Forged, human minds in biological-mechanical hybrid bodies, some mimicking animals, others machines (two of the central characters are basically spaceships, one a solo exploration vessel and the other a cargo carrier). Even among the "Unevolved", many people have technological augmentations. There are longstanding tensions between the Forged and the Unevolved around the Forged's place in society, particularly those who may have outlived their original purpose (such as the vast terraformers who made the Moon and Mars habitable).
On top of this background, Robson adds a classic first contact story. Isol, a deep-space explorer, encounters a strange lump of "Stuff", apparently inert at first but which allows her to create an instantaneous travel engine, and then discovers a mysterious Earth-like planet which appears to be its origin, and the novel follows several characters as the human race attempts to understand the nature of the Stuff and deal with the consequences of its discovery.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. Partly this is because I really struggled with the worldbuilding; unlike when I read Too Like the Lightning and found it exhilarating to try to understand the strange new world Ada Palmer had created, reading Natural History felt like hard work. There was a lot of invented jargon, different types of Forged humans and institutions and processes and I really struggled to take it all in and make any sense of it at all. I also felt that the pacing wasn't quite right; it's quite a short book, at just under 400 pages, and there was a lot of setup to create a number of plot threads which all then seemed to be resolved very quickly, so I couldn't help feeling that it might have been better with more space to develop the story (or perhaps less setup; I definitely enjoyed the last hundred pages or so, once the plot really started moving, more than the start). Most of the characters feel very underdeveloped, and even the two who are given more time don't quite seem fully realised. This is a novel that's full of interesting ideas, but I didn't think the execution quite lived up to the concept.
*How many of my book reviews start "when I spotted this in the Oxfam bookshop"? Probably most of the ones that aren't reviews of Kindle books...