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A review by iou
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
2.0
I started this book with very high expectations. However, halfway of it it became more of a burden than a pleasure to read. At the end, I just wanted it to be finished. Here are my top reasons with this book barely deserves 3 stars:
- This book could have been reduced to 500-600 pages and still be good. Instead, it provided tons of technical details. I for one welcome technical explanations, but still in many times it was annoying in a Tolkien-describing-vegetation kind of way.
- This book could actually be divided in one novel and one novella. This, and the reduction of some of the technical explanations could have given more space to describe how they survived, the social interactions after they arrived to Cleft, etc... I wasn't expecting a NASA technical handbook, I think the social part was way more interesting!
- For me, it would have been way more interesting some description of the following centuries rather than jumping 5K years without any other information. I would suppose that other events occurred during those millennia that were as relevan or more than meeting the Diggers and Pingers.
- The Agent. WTF is the Agent? What did cause the destruction of the moon? Was it natural? Some aliens? Would it occur again, say with planet Earth? All these questions were really important for this society, but apparently, nobody cared about the Agent anymore, which is lame IMHO.
- For me it is kind of weird to imagine such a separation among races, when they started in such a populated, reduced space. I would expect way more mixing (voluntary or not). The reason there are different groups of people on Earth is because we live separated by great distances. If everybody lived in the same place for centuries, I doubt we wouldn't mix almost completely.
- Why Sonar Taxlaw simply decides to join a party of aliens that was engaged in a fight with her group/clan/family a few minutes earlier? Seriously?
- Why Einstein has to hold the picture? Would the Pingers really recognize an Ivyan? I doubt it.
- What is the role of Ty? The purpose? Some brief explanations at the end but nothing really clarifying. It didn't seem like a resource to keep the mystery, but more like "I'm running out of pages" issue.
- The ending was absolutely anticlimactic, which is probably the most disappointing part of the book. I was expecting some Great Revelation® or other type of exciting end, but the end was really disappointing.
I'll be happy to read another book from Stephenson, but I'll probably will try to play it safe next time.
- This book could have been reduced to 500-600 pages and still be good. Instead, it provided tons of technical details. I for one welcome technical explanations, but still in many times it was annoying in a Tolkien-describing-vegetation kind of way.
Spoiler
- This book could actually be divided in one novel and one novella. This, and the reduction of some of the technical explanations could have given more space to describe how they survived, the social interactions after they arrived to Cleft, etc... I wasn't expecting a NASA technical handbook, I think the social part was way more interesting!
- For me, it would have been way more interesting some description of the following centuries rather than jumping 5K years without any other information. I would suppose that other events occurred during those millennia that were as relevan or more than meeting the Diggers and Pingers.
- The Agent. WTF is the Agent? What did cause the destruction of the moon? Was it natural? Some aliens? Would it occur again, say with planet Earth? All these questions were really important for this society, but apparently, nobody cared about the Agent anymore, which is lame IMHO.
- For me it is kind of weird to imagine such a separation among races, when they started in such a populated, reduced space. I would expect way more mixing (voluntary or not). The reason there are different groups of people on Earth is because we live separated by great distances. If everybody lived in the same place for centuries, I doubt we wouldn't mix almost completely.
- Why Sonar Taxlaw simply decides to join a party of aliens that was engaged in a fight with her group/clan/family a few minutes earlier? Seriously?
- Why Einstein has to hold the picture? Would the Pingers really recognize an Ivyan? I doubt it.
- What is the role of Ty? The purpose? Some brief explanations at the end but nothing really clarifying. It didn't seem like a resource to keep the mystery, but more like "I'm running out of pages" issue.
- The ending was absolutely anticlimactic, which is probably the most disappointing part of the book. I was expecting some Great Revelation® or other type of exciting end, but the end was really disappointing.
I'll be happy to read another book from Stephenson, but I'll probably will try to play it safe next time.