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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I liked the settings lot, the mystery was ok, the characters were quite but a little bit fake? I will read more to figure out if I like it :)
This has a great first sentence: “The man had disappeared from an isolated platform; the furthest platform eastward, in fact, on the 4°63' line, never a very popular ring.”
I like all the material culture: the recognizable but alien description of the “train station and station pub” equivalents, the clothes, the food. The prose is simple, doing the slightest bit of offbeat classic sci-fi pastiche with a quiet competence that makes me appreciate it all the more. There’s some fun inclusion of non-English languages that don’t seem forced, but rather like quite natural loanwords or calques that would crop up in the far future on a planet populated by the remnants of all Earth. Plot-relevant catnip. The characters were lightly sketched, but fun, familiar types. It’s a little bleak, both because the premise of Earthly destruction and the eventual end of the mystery plot hit rather close to home, but it’s also a little cozy and a little funny and a lovely way to spend an evening.
I like all the material culture: the recognizable but alien description of the “train station and station pub” equivalents, the clothes, the food. The prose is simple, doing the slightest bit of offbeat classic sci-fi pastiche with a quiet competence that makes me appreciate it all the more. There’s some fun inclusion of non-English languages that don’t seem forced, but rather like quite natural loanwords or calques that would crop up in the far future on a planet populated by the remnants of all Earth. Plot-relevant catnip. The characters were lightly sketched, but fun, familiar types. It’s a little bleak, both because the premise of Earthly destruction and the eventual end of the mystery plot hit rather close to home, but it’s also a little cozy and a little funny and a lovely way to spend an evening.
adventurous
mysterious
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:
No
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Disappointing- I know that Older can do better; the Infomocracy series was excellent. Not perfect; but at least flawed in interesting ways. This book feels very much like a step down- the author's note goes some way to explaining this, stating that it was written during the pandemic when Older needing something more straightforward. But this feels a lot like it is jumping on a bandwagon, with a collection of popular themes that are not really examined in interesting ways, leaving the whole thing feeling somewhat cynical. Especially given that the title is "The Mimicking of Known Successes"; that feels very on the nose! It does at least seem to have reached a wider audience than Infomocracy, so maybe mission accomplished.
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
An interesting premise but it drags quite a bit.
4/10 would recommend
4/10 would recommend
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced