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A review by rbixby
The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson
3.0
A long road to get where it was going. The last fourth of the book is when it got interesting for me. The first three quarters was -- I won't say it was a slog -- just interesting enough to keep me reading. I almost put this down in favor of the newly released, and greatly anticipated, Rhythm of War, but this wasn't a book I necessarily wanted to leave unfinished. I guess that speaks to maybe liking the story more than I'm letting on, but the simple fact is Anderson is dealing with some BIG ideas here and I wanted to see how he resolved them. It just took longer than I expected to get there.
Whenever I think about books like these after I finish them, that take on big concepts and spend a lot of time setting things up, I wonder if the book would have been better trimmed down. What parts could be removed without affecting the story? Honestly, I really don't know that it would have benefited. The point of all this was the history the Survivors lived through and how it made them more human in the end than us mere mortals, especially when technology caught up to what the Survivors naturally had, and how that technology changed the course of human history.
In the end, I'm glad I read this. Anderson is a favorite, despite his appalling use of adverbs on occasion.
Whenever I think about books like these after I finish them, that take on big concepts and spend a lot of time setting things up, I wonder if the book would have been better trimmed down. What parts could be removed without affecting the story? Honestly, I really don't know that it would have benefited. The point of all this was the history the Survivors lived through and how it made them more human in the end than us mere mortals, especially when technology caught up to what the Survivors naturally had, and how that technology changed the course of human history.
In the end, I'm glad I read this. Anderson is a favorite, despite his appalling use of adverbs on occasion.