A review by hawkeyegough
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter

2.0

This book had some really great ideas about human nature and some promising points. Unfortunately, the book jacket led me to believe it would be pretty different than what I read. For example, there were hundreds of pages of backstory about a character who wasn’t the main character and was a really unpleasant person. The book also focused pretty heavily on some physical aspects of reproduction that were detailed to the point of being gross. And this was done repeatedly when it really only needed to be explained once (if at all in the level of detail we were offered). I really wanted to enjoy this book, but the “main” character felt as if he was barely present, the epilogue seemed disjointed and unrelated, and I came away with the feeling that this could’ve been better as a short story.