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A review by kynan
Logan's Run by George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan
3.0
In the end, I was quite pleasantly surprised by this book! I didn't come into it with any preconceptions as I've not seen the movie and I only know that the book is "a classic" so I didn't have anything to be disappointed or surprised about. The only thing I really knew was that it was rather short.
This is one of those stories that just throws you in the deep end and doesn't waste time explaining what's going on or why. I didn't expect it to bother with explanations at all and I was quite pleasantly surprised when the author delved into some of the history that shaped the world that Logan lives in. I have a sneaking suspicion that the real reason for this is because Mr Nolan was trying to justify, or at least vaguely explain, the crazy shennanigans near the end of the book but hey, it was nice to get the backstory!
Given the length of the book, the character development (for the major characters at least) was quite good. In the end I really wasn't sure what Logan was actually going to do (in fact, to be honest, I'm still not really sure what happened at the end there).
Gripes? The book almost reads like a screenplay (I wonder if that's more the effect of [a:George Clayton Johnson|41748|George Clayton Johnson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1371332272p2/41748.jpg] than [a:William Nolan|4122906|William Nolan|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]?). It's action-heavy and moves very fast (I was put in mind of [a:Mathew Reilly|7472656|Mathew Reilly|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s [b:Contest|144773|Contest|Matthew Reilly|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311984048s/144773.jpg|955313] in fact.) This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the authors seem to get soooo excited about one-upping themselves for the dire straits that they can navigate Logan into that, about three-fifths of the way through, they just give up on explaining how he gets out of them again and we start the next chapter with everyone safely ready to face the next round of crazy.
Overall, a quick, fun, sneakily-thought-provoking story. I might even check out the sequels!
This is one of those stories that just throws you in the deep end and doesn't waste time explaining what's going on or why. I didn't expect it to bother with explanations at all and I was quite pleasantly surprised when the author delved into some of the history that shaped the world that Logan lives in. I have a sneaking suspicion that the real reason for this is because Mr Nolan was trying to justify, or at least vaguely explain, the crazy shennanigans near the end of the book but hey, it was nice to get the backstory!
Given the length of the book, the character development (for the major characters at least) was quite good. In the end I really wasn't sure what Logan was actually going to do (in fact, to be honest, I'm still not really sure what happened at the end there).
Gripes? The book almost reads like a screenplay (I wonder if that's more the effect of [a:George Clayton Johnson|41748|George Clayton Johnson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1371332272p2/41748.jpg] than [a:William Nolan|4122906|William Nolan|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]?). It's action-heavy and moves very fast (I was put in mind of [a:Mathew Reilly|7472656|Mathew Reilly|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s [b:Contest|144773|Contest|Matthew Reilly|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311984048s/144773.jpg|955313] in fact.) This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the authors seem to get soooo excited about one-upping themselves for the dire straits that they can navigate Logan into that, about three-fifths of the way through, they just give up on explaining how he gets out of them again and we start the next chapter with everyone safely ready to face the next round of crazy.
Overall, a quick, fun, sneakily-thought-provoking story. I might even check out the sequels!