A review by bookishgoblin
253 by Geoff Ryman

1.0

This is absolutely awful. If I could give it negative stars I would, -3 stars to this. It's a good concept that is executed terribly. Each person on this train has their own page long story, but each person is boring, I forgot half the stories a second after reading them and the other half barely even went in. This was fairly progressive in several ways and honestly offensive in many others. I know that there should be separation of the author from the text, but honestly, I felt genuinely sick reading this. The book seems massively in favour of immigration painting characters from other countries in a wonderful and sympathetic note. However, there were some massive problems mostly concerning women being abused, it also managed to demonise any woman who was sexual in any way. I don't mean to tell Ryman how to write, but women do not think how he thinks they do.

Basically the whole book pissed me off, and I didn't even finish it. There is a section at the end that tells you briefly what happens when people get off the train, and I read about the characters I knew about, but frankly I just really didn't care.

This was the most boring book I've ever read, had he picked a select few characters and made longer stories out of it and explored them more it could have been great, but no. He had to attempt some experimental bullshit that destroyed some perfectly good stories.

I could complain a lot more, but frankly, I want to be done with this book