A review by karp76
Hard to Be a God by Arkady Strugatsky

3.0

Lost in translation? There must be some blame. There must be some motive to explain the relics of a story. There's a lot here. You can feel it as you read. The names. The premise. Even the atmosphere that leaks off the pages. But, there's nothing. Really thinking and diving into the pages, there's nothing here. All of this potential, all of this promise, all of this stuff, amounts to very little. A thin plot, some awkward language, an obtuse message, and some encounters that boil and build, waiting to expand, then simply fizzle. This is not a great book. This is not a poor book. This is an unfinished book, a book of promises and expectation that tries, that tries so desperately hard to be more than its sum, but cannot sustain these promises under its lack of development and thin narrative.