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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This was a fun read. I do have to say though that once I figured out where it was going, it took a little long to get there. But a great and surprising take on first contact and an unexpected response from humanity.
I found Forge on a list of recommended "first contact" books. I had read one or two of Bear's books in the past, but couldn't honestly remember if I actually liked them. Now that I've finished Forge, methinks I kept away for a reason.
First and foremost, I love the really big idea sci-fi stories. I don't want super dense, super scientific 'hard' sci-fi. I want enjoyable reads that my brain turning. I want to see what decisions the author makes to unfold their own speculative approaches. And one thing I do like about Bear is his characters are pretty one-dimensional. At the scale of 'big idea' books, I'd rather not waste time on the minutiae of tiny humans when we could be talking about aliens, space travel, and cool technology. To an extent, Bear delivers on that in Forge, but on the whole, the book felt lacking in creativity. He conjured up a few concepts - competing alien narratives, the 'bullets' in the Earth, the spiders - but nothing all that special, even for having been written in 1987.
The biggest issue I have with Forge, though, was in the pacing - on two levels. First, of the book's ~460 pages, it doesn't actually pick up and get interesting until the last 60 or so. It does jump right in on page 8, I'll give it that. But then it's just a ton of talking, traveling, thinking, and more talking. The potential for expounding on Big Ideas is totally wasted. And secondly - and most importantly - the in-book pacing and logic of the characters was, frankly, dumb. We make first contact with aliens and the earth doesn't significantly change AT ALL? People take weeks and months to change their behaviors in any meaningful way? Bear proposes we would just ...carry on, barely acknowledging them on the grand scale? Throughout my entire reading session, I just kept thinking there might be a huge twist; neither Bear nor the reader could possibly be missing the forest for so big of a tree - right? But no, he misses the forest entirely. For all of his ideas and plot, Bear wrote a book about first contact where the protagonists carry on in an almost vacuum-like parallel world to the rest of humanity, only until THE direst of situations begins to finally unfold. Illogical and flat. Admittedly, there were a couple of pages in the last 20 or 30 that got me feeling something, but it was brief and passing and unsubstantial.
I wanted a Big Idea book, and I suppose in a literal sense, I got that. I don't regret spending the time; it was a fun little summertime jaunt. But I can't say I really enjoyed it all that much, nor do I expect to remember it after I try a Bigger Idea.
First and foremost, I love the really big idea sci-fi stories. I don't want super dense, super scientific 'hard' sci-fi. I want enjoyable reads that my brain turning. I want to see what decisions the author makes to unfold their own speculative approaches. And one thing I do like about Bear is his characters are pretty one-dimensional. At the scale of 'big idea' books, I'd rather not waste time on the minutiae of tiny humans when we could be talking about aliens, space travel, and cool technology. To an extent, Bear delivers on that in Forge, but on the whole, the book felt lacking in creativity. He conjured up a few concepts - competing alien narratives, the 'bullets' in the Earth, the spiders - but nothing all that special, even for having been written in 1987.
The biggest issue I have with Forge, though, was in the pacing - on two levels. First, of the book's ~460 pages, it doesn't actually pick up and get interesting until the last 60 or so. It does jump right in on page 8, I'll give it that. But then it's just a ton of talking, traveling, thinking, and more talking. The potential for expounding on Big Ideas is totally wasted. And secondly - and most importantly - the in-book pacing and logic of the characters was, frankly, dumb. We make first contact with aliens and the earth doesn't significantly change AT ALL? People take weeks and months to change their behaviors in any meaningful way? Bear proposes we would just ...carry on, barely acknowledging them on the grand scale? Throughout my entire reading session, I just kept thinking there might be a huge twist; neither Bear nor the reader could possibly be missing the forest for so big of a tree - right? But no, he misses the forest entirely. For all of his ideas and plot, Bear wrote a book about first contact where the protagonists carry on in an almost vacuum-like parallel world to the rest of humanity, only until THE direst of situations begins to finally unfold. Illogical and flat. Admittedly, there were a couple of pages in the last 20 or 30 that got me feeling something, but it was brief and passing and unsubstantial.
I wanted a Big Idea book, and I suppose in a literal sense, I got that. I don't regret spending the time; it was a fun little summertime jaunt. But I can't say I really enjoyed it all that much, nor do I expect to remember it after I try a Bigger Idea.
More of a 4.5 due to some menwritingwomen material, and how I wish more of the world under duress of ultimate extinction was explored, but other than that, this was a pretty compelling view of the world coming to an end by nameless entities. It was actually pretty depressing watching a hopeless humanity get wiped out, which only makes me eager to see how it all plays out in the sequel.
adventurous
tense
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
medium-paced
So, my re-read of Eon seems to have kick-started me re-reading other Greg Bear novels and I've just finished The Forge Of God. For a short period in the late eighties/early nineties, Bear could probably have said to have been my favourite SF author. I didn't pick up everything he wrote in that period, but I did buy and read most of it.
The Forge Of God is probably, along with Eon, the novel that stuck most in my memory and, while more critical minds than mine might pick it apart (the US-centric P.O.V., the lack of panic/hysteria/lawlessness at the announced global destruction, a conversation between two people that made no sense to me(even after multiple re-reads he still seemed to get the two people mixed up) and one character checking his watch just a few pages after having to give up his watch...) I enjoyed revisiting it. It veers off, perhaps unsurprisingly, into sentimentality towards the end, but the pacing is superb.
I think I lost track of Bear just after reading Dinosaur Summer, which I didn't enjoy. Maybe, once I've exhausted what's on my shelves, it will be time to check out some of the stuff I missed.
The Forge Of God is probably, along with Eon, the novel that stuck most in my memory and, while more critical minds than mine might pick it apart (the US-centric P.O.V., the lack of panic/hysteria/lawlessness at the announced global destruction, a conversation between two people that made no sense to me(even after multiple re-reads he still seemed to get the two people mixed up) and one character checking his watch just a few pages after having to give up his watch...) I enjoyed revisiting it. It veers off, perhaps unsurprisingly, into sentimentality towards the end, but the pacing is superb.
I think I lost track of Bear just after reading Dinosaur Summer, which I didn't enjoy. Maybe, once I've exhausted what's on my shelves, it will be time to check out some of the stuff I missed.
The plot for Forge of God was gripping, and well-written. If you enjoyed reading Seveneves you will certainly enjoy this book.
That said, I couldn't give it a full five stars. This book does not even attempt the Bechdel test; there are simply no female main characters, and the few minor female characters are simply there for show. There's also only a single non-white character despite this being an obvious global catastrophe.
That said, I couldn't give it a full five stars. This book does not even attempt the Bechdel test; there are simply no female main characters, and the few minor female characters are simply there for show. There's also only a single non-white character despite this being an obvious global catastrophe.
I usually just don't write a review if I didn't like a book, but the more I sat with this one the more it began to offend me on behalf of the human species. Plus, there are a lot of pacing, formatting, and general literature issues on top of that.
The first thing that offended me as a reader was the lack of respect Bear seems to have for the reader's intelligence: it's painfully obvious the Earth is going to die about 20% into the book, before we've even met all the characters. It remains painfully obvious throughout, but this isn't what really brought my ire at Greg Bear (who, I'd like to add, has written some books I really enjoyed). It's always confusing to me when I realize I'm starting to hate a book written by one of my favorite authors, and I think that allowed me to essentially read the first half of the book with beer goggles on. Unfortunately, what really pushed me toward active dislike for the book was the reaction by humanity. Bear seems to have written this book to give us his perspective on how small and insignificant we are. But usually when authors do this, we get some sort of redeeming quality like "yes, the valiant humans were outnumbered and outgunned, but never out of hope." Something inspiring and redeeming even if it's a little cheesy. Maybe this is just me, but when none of the characters are worth rooting for, I really struggle with a book. Bear's portrayal of humanity is as stupid, slow, hesitant, gullible and duplicitous. The only redeeming quality in any of the characters was the obvious love and protection the Gordon family give each other throughout the crisis the book describes. Everyone else is pretty 2-dimensional, or worse they feel contrived simply to fill a purpose (Reuben) and round out the cast. I'm not sure whether Bear is saying humans would or could just give up in the face of an invasion, but I reject both assertions. Humans are a lot of things, but placid isn't one of them. It takes almost nothing to get people riled up about stuff, and a threat to their homes is something I think everybody would feel viscerally and not ignore. This is where the root of my offense comes from: Bear believes we'd all just give up. Or maybe he believes we should just give up in the face of "impossible" odds. This was hard to accept, and by the time I realized he wasn't going to have any sort of redemption (the world blows up, 99.9999% of humans die horribly in ways that are described way more vividly and long-windedly than necessary) for the planet, the species or even for any of the individual characters, I checked out. I finished the book by forcing myself to skim paragraphs for relevance. Please, Mr. Bear if you're going to write a "Big Idea" sci-fi book, could you put somebody worth following your ideas to their conclusion in? I understand that a lot of the Big Idea sci-fi neglects the characters on purpose, but if you're going to do that there needs to be some redemption via some other plot device or the reader can (and did) lose interest.
I think Greg Bear could learn a lot from Han Solo here about human perseverance and irrational grit in the face of the impossible: "never tell me the odds."
TL;DR - This book has an incredible premise and generally adheres at least loosely to scientific principles, but the execution was incredibly flawed. There was almost no conflict, and as a result no driving tension making me want to continue. Could really use some good editing to remove about 2/3 of the book and turn it into a short story.
Spoiler
The first thing that offended me as a reader was the lack of respect Bear seems to have for the reader's intelligence: it's painfully obvious the Earth is going to die about 20% into the book, before we've even met all the characters. It remains painfully obvious throughout, but this isn't what really brought my ire at Greg Bear (who, I'd like to add, has written some books I really enjoyed). It's always confusing to me when I realize I'm starting to hate a book written by one of my favorite authors, and I think that allowed me to essentially read the first half of the book with beer goggles on. Unfortunately, what really pushed me toward active dislike for the book was the reaction by humanity. Bear seems to have written this book to give us his perspective on how small and insignificant we are. But usually when authors do this, we get some sort of redeeming quality like "yes, the valiant humans were outnumbered and outgunned, but never out of hope." Something inspiring and redeeming even if it's a little cheesy. Maybe this is just me, but when none of the characters are worth rooting for, I really struggle with a book. Bear's portrayal of humanity is as stupid, slow, hesitant, gullible and duplicitous. The only redeeming quality in any of the characters was the obvious love and protection the Gordon family give each other throughout the crisis the book describes. Everyone else is pretty 2-dimensional, or worse they feel contrived simply to fill a purpose (Reuben) and round out the cast. I'm not sure whether Bear is saying humans would or could just give up in the face of an invasion, but I reject both assertions. Humans are a lot of things, but placid isn't one of them. It takes almost nothing to get people riled up about stuff, and a threat to their homes is something I think everybody would feel viscerally and not ignore. This is where the root of my offense comes from: Bear believes we'd all just give up. Or maybe he believes we should just give up in the face of "impossible" odds. This was hard to accept, and by the time I realized he wasn't going to have any sort of redemption (the world blows up, 99.9999% of humans die horribly in ways that are described way more vividly and long-windedly than necessary) for the planet, the species or even for any of the individual characters, I checked out. I finished the book by forcing myself to skim paragraphs for relevance. Please, Mr. Bear if you're going to write a "Big Idea" sci-fi book, could you put somebody worth following your ideas to their conclusion in? I understand that a lot of the Big Idea sci-fi neglects the characters on purpose, but if you're going to do that there needs to be some redemption via some other plot device or the reader can (and did) lose interest.
I think Greg Bear could learn a lot from Han Solo here about human perseverance and irrational grit in the face of the impossible: "never tell me the odds."
TL;DR - This book has an incredible premise and generally adheres at least loosely to scientific principles, but the execution was incredibly flawed. There was almost no conflict, and as a result no driving tension making me want to continue. Could really use some good editing to remove about 2/3 of the book and turn it into a short story.