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A review by hansemrbean
Radix by A.A. Attanasio
2.0
Reading this felt like ages - more than once I thought to just abandon it, but I usually do read books through - just in case it will surprise me. Well, I definitly won't read the other three books.
There are some good ideas, and the setting is epic, with an interesting world-building. That the hero is an anti-hero is also ok - provided there is some development. That is the first problem I had with this book - in the beginning, the hero is just a quite unsympathetic guy, who kills "bad" people, but later he kind of evolves - by being dragged into different situations, where he is improving a lot physically - and mentally, too, at least in the sense that he is mastering his mind. But there is no real character evolution here - with rare exceptions, he is always being dragged by someone more or less willingly (a lot of destiny involved). Basically, he is evolving into a kind of a superhuman (it is often enough stressed that he is superior genetically, he's got a "white card" proving that, which, at least for me, has some quite unpleasent associations).
The other thing that is somehow related is the abundance of pseudo-philosophical gibberish (YMMV, of course) that may have been en vogue at the time this was written (you may like this, if you are into new age stuff). For me, it was just plain boring, and the try to put a pseudo-scientific base there made it only worse for me.
Also, the narrative feels a bit random - maybe the book would be quite good if it were condensed to a third of the current size. As it is, there are long chapters where the story just drags on and on. I couldn't decide on a rating until now, but well - after mentally going over the storyline again - a 2 it will be.
There are some good ideas, and the setting is epic, with an interesting world-building. That the hero is an anti-hero is also ok - provided there is some development. That is the first problem I had with this book - in the beginning, the hero is just a quite unsympathetic guy, who kills "bad" people, but later he kind of evolves - by being dragged into different situations, where he is improving a lot physically - and mentally, too, at least in the sense that he is mastering his mind. But there is no real character evolution here - with rare exceptions, he is always being dragged by someone more or less willingly (a lot of destiny involved). Basically, he is evolving into a kind of a superhuman (it is often enough stressed that he is superior genetically, he's got a "white card" proving that, which, at least for me, has some quite unpleasent associations).
The other thing that is somehow related is the abundance of pseudo-philosophical gibberish (YMMV, of course) that may have been en vogue at the time this was written (you may like this, if you are into new age stuff). For me, it was just plain boring, and the try to put a pseudo-scientific base there made it only worse for me.
Also, the narrative feels a bit random - maybe the book would be quite good if it were condensed to a third of the current size. As it is, there are long chapters where the story just drags on and on. I couldn't decide on a rating until now, but well - after mentally going over the storyline again - a 2 it will be.