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A review by jersy
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card
3.0
A really interesting book with a really dissapointing last third.
I loved how half of this is the story of Christopher Columbus, portrayed as a not that likable but determined man, working towards a mission for years, and the other half is about researchers from the future studying him and the possibility of interfering with him. The researchers knowledge, theories and goals kept evolving and I much prefered that approach to having the same mission from the start. This really is a book about studying the past and the potential implications of messing with it. The characters felt like real, living people, too, but I never really grew attached to them. Still, I enjoyed a lot how the book fully committed to its premise.
Then there was a twist that took a lot of agency from the characters and everything after this was just less interesting and parts of it a bit weird. Some of the nuance of the novel didn't survive through this and so it just didn't have an ending that satisfied me.
I loved how half of this is the story of Christopher Columbus, portrayed as a not that likable but determined man, working towards a mission for years, and the other half is about researchers from the future studying him and the possibility of interfering with him. The researchers knowledge, theories and goals kept evolving and I much prefered that approach to having the same mission from the start. This really is a book about studying the past and the potential implications of messing with it. The characters felt like real, living people, too, but I never really grew attached to them. Still, I enjoyed a lot how the book fully committed to its premise.
Then there was a twist that took a lot of agency from the characters and everything after this was just less interesting and parts of it a bit weird. Some of the nuance of the novel didn't survive through this and so it just didn't have an ending that satisfied me.