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A review by steven_v
The Dark Design by Philip José Farmer
3.0
This is the third book in the Riverworld saga. In the first book, we followed 19th century explorer Richard Burton and his band. In the second book, we followed the story of Mark Twain. in the third book, we read a little about these two, but also focus on several new characters, including Jill, an airship pilot, and a more in-depth focus on Peter Frigate, who appears in the first book but is not a viewpoint character until this one.
Overall, this book is longer and more action-packed than the first two. A lot happens, and several plot points advance quite well. However, the book suffers from this as well. There are too many characters, and we switch among them too much. This makes the story unnecessarily hard to follow.
Probably the main issue I have with this novel, though, is that it seems to be long just for the sake of being long. Farmer indulges himself in far too much pontificating about historical events and the various philosophical outlooks of the world. It feels, in many places, like he is showing off how much he knows. I'm suitably impressed with his scholarship, but it has, at best, only a tangential relationship to the story of Riverworld. A few times the scholarship is also misplaced -- interrupting the action with long discourses about the Sufi philosophy, for example. Surely this could have been done at another time (or better yet, entirely deleted).
There is at least one more book in this series and possibly two -- I know there is a 5th book, but according to Farmer's introduction to Book 3, the series will end on Book 4, and then other books will just contain other stories of the Riverworld (prequels, as it were). I suppose I won't know if that is true or not until the end of book four.
This book was fairly good, and it kept me reading, although it took me almost a month to get through, mostly because the long scholarship sections tended to bore me and make me leave it aside for a few days. They were tough to get through. The action scenes were fairly good, on the other hand.
Other than scholarship, one issue this book has is that certain secrets have been revealed here, I think, a little too early. If there really are 1-2 more books to go, then certain goals should not have been reached yet, but already were. I won't say any more about it to avoid spoilers, but there is a certain sense of anticlimax at the end here.
I have to say, however, that I am still intensely curious about the why of Riverworld -- why every human being on earth, except those who died before they turned 5, was resurrected on one giant world, and how the world was even constructed, and by whom. I very much want to know what all the answers were. Hopefully they will be worth the journey.
Overall, this book is longer and more action-packed than the first two. A lot happens, and several plot points advance quite well. However, the book suffers from this as well. There are too many characters, and we switch among them too much. This makes the story unnecessarily hard to follow.
Probably the main issue I have with this novel, though, is that it seems to be long just for the sake of being long. Farmer indulges himself in far too much pontificating about historical events and the various philosophical outlooks of the world. It feels, in many places, like he is showing off how much he knows. I'm suitably impressed with his scholarship, but it has, at best, only a tangential relationship to the story of Riverworld. A few times the scholarship is also misplaced -- interrupting the action with long discourses about the Sufi philosophy, for example. Surely this could have been done at another time (or better yet, entirely deleted).
There is at least one more book in this series and possibly two -- I know there is a 5th book, but according to Farmer's introduction to Book 3, the series will end on Book 4, and then other books will just contain other stories of the Riverworld (prequels, as it were). I suppose I won't know if that is true or not until the end of book four.
This book was fairly good, and it kept me reading, although it took me almost a month to get through, mostly because the long scholarship sections tended to bore me and make me leave it aside for a few days. They were tough to get through. The action scenes were fairly good, on the other hand.
Other than scholarship, one issue this book has is that certain secrets have been revealed here, I think, a little too early. If there really are 1-2 more books to go, then certain goals should not have been reached yet, but already were. I won't say any more about it to avoid spoilers, but there is a certain sense of anticlimax at the end here.
I have to say, however, that I am still intensely curious about the why of Riverworld -- why every human being on earth, except those who died before they turned 5, was resurrected on one giant world, and how the world was even constructed, and by whom. I very much want to know what all the answers were. Hopefully they will be worth the journey.