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A review by bookph1le
The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin
3.0
I liked it and thought it was a satisfying end to the trilogy, but...
- To me, it was overly long. I didn't necessarily dislike passages, but when the story picked up its threads again, I'd think, "Oh, good. We're finally getting back to the plot now." Things take such a long time to happen. Rather than get on with it, there are often long tangents. I felt a lot of this could easily have been conveyed in far fewer pages.
- I plain didn't like some of the choices characters made.
As for specifics, spoilers ahead.
- Peter was so annoying to me. He made such dumb choices. It drove me up the wall that he refused to listen to Amy and Alicia, who knew far more about Fanning than he did. Which leads to...
- In the face of the knowledge that you will have to try to save the human race, you do dumb crap. Why does this crop up so often in apocalyptic stories? Michael is right that they need to be choosy about who gets on the boat, but Peter is having none of that practicality, for reasons that don't make any sense.
- Despite the suggestion that he's practical, Michael seems not to have done much planning beyond fixing the boat. I mean, wouldn't you also think about filling the boat with tools, seeds, helpful books, etc., considering that your plan is to set up civilization on an uninhabited island, with a small population and limited resources? Instead, you not only neglect to do this, you blow up the boat rather than stripping it for invaluable scrap? Say what?
- The female characters are just so disappointing. Mostly they're there to lend a hand to male characters. I used to really like Alicia, but she seemed kind of superfluous in this book.
- I'm not sold on the overall plot. Basically, it all boils down to this: Fanning has a tantrum because he didn't get the girl, which nearly results in the total annihilation of the human race. I hate that guy. He's such a jerk.
- Lastly, there is no conceivable way that Amy would be able to communicate so easily with the other characters at the end. That is not how languages work, not after hundreds of years in isolation. It would be like me going back to England in the 1200s and having no problem chatting with a local peasant. Not gonna happen, folks.
In the end, I kind of have mixed feelings about this trilogy, but, still, I do enjoy this more literary version of science fiction and supernatural elements. I just think a book like Station Eleven does it better.
- To me, it was overly long. I didn't necessarily dislike passages, but when the story picked up its threads again, I'd think, "Oh, good. We're finally getting back to the plot now." Things take such a long time to happen. Rather than get on with it, there are often long tangents. I felt a lot of this could easily have been conveyed in far fewer pages.
- I plain didn't like some of the choices characters made.
As for specifics, spoilers ahead.
Spoiler
- Fanning was a pompous windbag. He calls himself grandiose at one point, so I know this is intentional, but it made him come across as cartoonish at times. I was interested in his past, but that chunk of the novel was jarring for me because it was as if an entirely different book suddenly appeared on my Kindle. I went from something sci-fi/supernatural to literary fiction, and I ended up getting a little impatient with it.- Peter was so annoying to me. He made such dumb choices. It drove me up the wall that he refused to listen to Amy and Alicia, who knew far more about Fanning than he did. Which leads to...
- In the face of the knowledge that you will have to try to save the human race, you do dumb crap. Why does this crop up so often in apocalyptic stories? Michael is right that they need to be choosy about who gets on the boat, but Peter is having none of that practicality, for reasons that don't make any sense.
- Despite the suggestion that he's practical, Michael seems not to have done much planning beyond fixing the boat. I mean, wouldn't you also think about filling the boat with tools, seeds, helpful books, etc., considering that your plan is to set up civilization on an uninhabited island, with a small population and limited resources? Instead, you not only neglect to do this, you blow up the boat rather than stripping it for invaluable scrap? Say what?
- The female characters are just so disappointing. Mostly they're there to lend a hand to male characters. I used to really like Alicia, but she seemed kind of superfluous in this book.
- I'm not sold on the overall plot. Basically, it all boils down to this: Fanning has a tantrum because he didn't get the girl, which nearly results in the total annihilation of the human race. I hate that guy. He's such a jerk.
- Lastly, there is no conceivable way that Amy would be able to communicate so easily with the other characters at the end. That is not how languages work, not after hundreds of years in isolation. It would be like me going back to England in the 1200s and having no problem chatting with a local peasant. Not gonna happen, folks.
In the end, I kind of have mixed feelings about this trilogy, but, still, I do enjoy this more literary version of science fiction and supernatural elements. I just think a book like Station Eleven does it better.