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A review by kingofspain93
Hard to Be a God by Boris Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky
3.0
the prologue of the novel is one of its strongest parts, and it made me think that women were going to play a much larger role in the philosophy of the novel than they did. the story is about punishment for intellectualism, and the loneliness that comes with being able to see the horizon. not a single one of the persecuted thinkers in Hard to Be a God is a woman, and in fact the only female character of note on the feudal planet is a yielding young peasant girl whose selling points are mental purity and a sort of breathless adoration for the male protagonist. it's such an obvious flaw in a novel about utopia and the life of the mind to exclude 51% of humanity from the discourse.
the world-building was interesting, and the Strugatskys do have panache as fiction authors. there is something valuable here about the strange isolation of intellect in a crowded world, and if you know you know. I just wanted more from this. and it's a lazy comparison, but Left Hand of Darkness is a much better novel because it doesn't sell me any silly ideas about the arc of history bending towards justice or any bullshit like that (at least not that I remember).
the world-building was interesting, and the Strugatskys do have panache as fiction authors. there is something valuable here about the strange isolation of intellect in a crowded world, and if you know you know. I just wanted more from this. and it's a lazy comparison, but Left Hand of Darkness is a much better novel because it doesn't sell me any silly ideas about the arc of history bending towards justice or any bullshit like that (at least not that I remember).