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A review by kynan
Anthill by Edward O. Wilson
4.0
This is, mostly, the story of Raphael Semmes Cody (aka Raff), an Alabama boy, following him from age 15 through to 30. It was well written and the ending actually caught me by surprise. I felt that there was an obvious setup very early on in the book and I kept waiting for it to all fall into place, and it didn't.
For the most part the story follows the trials and tribulations of Raff, told mostly in limited third-person (although I feel that it may have strayed into omniscient territory towards the end of the book), narrated (perhaps) by "Uncle" Fred - a close friend and eventual mentor of Raff. It does however veer temporarily, but quite sharply, into a related story. I'm somewhat tempted to classify this as "hard-fiction", in the style of "hard-science-fiction". The related story a technically unstinting novella embedded as part 3 (I think) of this book and it very much put me in mind of [b:Fiasco|28766|Fiasco|Stanisław Lem|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1287614689s/28766.jpg|1762117] by [a:Stanisław Lem|10991|Stanisław Lem|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1246185166p2/10991.jpg]. Specifically, and somewhat obviously, the chapter about the giant, unrelenting, anthills. It's not just the subject matter though, but the style in which it is written. I greatly enjoyed the lavish detail with which factual knowledge, as well as entertainment, was imparted.
I listened to the Audible version of this book and the narrator (Kevin T. Collins) did a spectacular job on the Deep Southern accents and credibly voiced both the narration and the speech of the characters. Again, my only complaint is the bloody music that gets tacked onto the beginning and the end. Especially the end in this case. It starts playing about three sentences from the end of the book in an extremely annoying fashion.
For the most part the story follows the trials and tribulations of Raff, told mostly in limited third-person (although I feel that it may have strayed into omniscient territory towards the end of the book), narrated (perhaps) by "Uncle" Fred - a close friend and eventual mentor of Raff. It does however veer temporarily, but quite sharply, into a related story. I'm somewhat tempted to classify this as "hard-fiction", in the style of "hard-science-fiction". The related story a technically unstinting novella embedded as part 3 (I think) of this book and it very much put me in mind of [b:Fiasco|28766|Fiasco|Stanisław Lem|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1287614689s/28766.jpg|1762117] by [a:Stanisław Lem|10991|Stanisław Lem|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1246185166p2/10991.jpg]. Specifically, and somewhat obviously, the chapter about the giant, unrelenting, anthills. It's not just the subject matter though, but the style in which it is written. I greatly enjoyed the lavish detail with which factual knowledge, as well as entertainment, was imparted.
I listened to the Audible version of this book and the narrator (Kevin T. Collins) did a spectacular job on the Deep Southern accents and credibly voiced both the narration and the speech of the characters. Again, my only complaint is the bloody music that gets tacked onto the beginning and the end. Especially the end in this case. It starts playing about three sentences from the end of the book in an extremely annoying fashion.