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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
sad
I've wanted to read it for awhile n chose it for school assignment. I am currently making a literary essay based on it. To be fully honest I didn't enjoy it too much. It wasn't the worst I've read but it was boring. I expected so much from it bc the novel is over 400 pages. I anticipated the way all 3 lives would be connected 95% of the book then it fell flat. Tao's story was the most interesting but especially George's was so predictable and boring. I feel like the author could've done so much more with the main characters and their plots. My favourite character was a side character, William's daughter Charlotte. I give it 2 stars because the subject (the bee population n them going extinct) is important and hopefully this makes people research it more.
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.
Something that you may or may not know about me is that I like bees. My favourite line of poetry is Virgil's Georgics IV: 87, "ingentis animos angusto in pectore versant (In their tiny chests beat mighty hearts)". So a novel titled The History of Bees, particularly one with science fictional elements and compared with [b:Station Eleven|20170404|Station Eleven|Emily St. John Mandel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451446835s/20170404.jpg|28098716], seemed right up my street. And indeed, there is much in this novel that is good. Tao's world and story, set eight decades into our future when bees have disappeared, is a fascinating projection of how society would change if the bee population were decimated. The struggles faced by beekeeper George against modern farming were a fascinating depiction of how industrialised agriculture harms the ecosystem. There are shades of a good book in here, and parts of it I found really enjoyable.
But then there's William, a mid-nineteenth-century biologist with whom I found it very difficult to connect. I suspect that the structure, in which these three stories in three timelines develop alongside one another, is intended to show the long history of the symbiotic relationship between humans and bees. But each story is so narrowly focused that the scope is limited, especially in the cases of William and George, whose relationship with bees is that they are beekeepers. The full force of the human/bee relationship is left to Tao's story, where the disappearance of the bees has a massive impact on the whole human race. William especially, but also George, seem to blunder through events without really having any impact on them; for me, George was likeable enough to maintain my interest, but William just didn't do anything for me at all. A much greater focus on Tao's story, with the other two told briefly through the books she reads and documentaries she watches, would have been much more interesting. As it stands, there are three quite weak stories vaguely interconnected, the chapters of which just happen to be interspersed between one another.
On top of which I also found the writing style awkward, relying regularly on info dumps and telling rather than showing. I think that part of the problem is in the translation, as there are quite a few awkward uses of English that really ought to have been better edited. But a glance through the Goodreads reviews suggests that this awkwardness is present in a number of different languages, so it seems unlikely that it is just the translation.
Therefore, while Tao's story is worthwhile and George's has some good bits, the novel as a whole is slow, frustrating, and fails to fulfil an interesting premise.
Something that you may or may not know about me is that I like bees. My favourite line of poetry is Virgil's Georgics IV: 87, "ingentis animos angusto in pectore versant (In their tiny chests beat mighty hearts)". So a novel titled The History of Bees, particularly one with science fictional elements and compared with [b:Station Eleven|20170404|Station Eleven|Emily St. John Mandel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451446835s/20170404.jpg|28098716], seemed right up my street. And indeed, there is much in this novel that is good. Tao's world and story, set eight decades into our future when bees have disappeared, is a fascinating projection of how society would change if the bee population were decimated. The struggles faced by beekeeper George against modern farming were a fascinating depiction of how industrialised agriculture harms the ecosystem. There are shades of a good book in here, and parts of it I found really enjoyable.
But then there's William, a mid-nineteenth-century biologist with whom I found it very difficult to connect. I suspect that the structure, in which these three stories in three timelines develop alongside one another, is intended to show the long history of the symbiotic relationship between humans and bees. But each story is so narrowly focused that the scope is limited, especially in the cases of William and George, whose relationship with bees is that they are beekeepers. The full force of the human/bee relationship is left to Tao's story, where the disappearance of the bees has a massive impact on the whole human race. William especially, but also George, seem to blunder through events without really having any impact on them; for me, George was likeable enough to maintain my interest, but William just didn't do anything for me at all. A much greater focus on Tao's story, with the other two told briefly through the books she reads and documentaries she watches, would have been much more interesting. As it stands, there are three quite weak stories vaguely interconnected, the chapters of which just happen to be interspersed between one another.
On top of which I also found the writing style awkward, relying regularly on info dumps and telling rather than showing. I think that part of the problem is in the translation, as there are quite a few awkward uses of English that really ought to have been better edited. But a glance through the Goodreads reviews suggests that this awkwardness is present in a number of different languages, so it seems unlikely that it is just the translation.
Therefore, while Tao's story is worthwhile and George's has some good bits, the novel as a whole is slow, frustrating, and fails to fulfil an interesting premise.
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The History of Bees feels like waste potential. The message is great, but really 2 out 3 narrators are total assholes, a lot of it feels a bit cliché and it's a bit hard to actually enjoy the read