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dhasenkampf 's review for:
Atomic Anna
by Rachel Barenbaum
slow-paced
The dust jacket calls this book an epic adventure. It isn't. This book is a character study of three women throughout various points in their lives and there just happens to be some time travel thrown in to help move the plot along.
Of the three characters it seemed to me like Raisa, the granddaughter was the most fleshed out. I understood her and her motivations for the most part. The grandmother, Anna, was somewhat well written, but her motivations weren't satisfactorily explained, and her history wasn't explored in enough depth. And the woman in the middle, Molly, was one of the most annoying characters I've ever read. She never develops past a selfish teenage girl making stupid mistakes. Even once she's an adult, I still wanted to throttle her for the dumb things she said and did. And then blamed everyone else for her problems.
The thing that bugged me the most was the actual time travel. This book wasn't like Sea of Tranquility by Mandel. (A book I happened to be reading at the same time and after these two I don't want to read any more time travel for a very long time.) In that book, time travel is a fact that's never explained. It just exists and no further detail is given. That's fine. Atomic Anna is also unlike Andy Weir books. Weir explains the science behind his concepts in depth, but also in a way that the layperson can basically understand them. This book falls somewhere in the middle. Barenbaum throws scientific and mathematical terminology out like she's trying to win a prize for the most times graviton can be used in a book. We get liberal sprinkles of electromagnetism, waves, fission, Einstein, etc. but no actual explanation of what those mean. And frankly, I don't want to know. I wanted a story to entertain me, not bring me back in time to college level astrophysics. Nothing was explained well enough that I actually understood any of the theory behind time travel, but the science took up so many pages that I got bored and had to skim to keep from falling asleep.
Overall, an okay character study that needed some serious editing and different branding.
Of the three characters it seemed to me like Raisa, the granddaughter was the most fleshed out. I understood her and her motivations for the most part. The grandmother, Anna, was somewhat well written, but her motivations weren't satisfactorily explained, and her history wasn't explored in enough depth. And the woman in the middle, Molly, was one of the most annoying characters I've ever read. She never develops past a selfish teenage girl making stupid mistakes. Even once she's an adult, I still wanted to throttle her for the dumb things she said and did. And then blamed everyone else for her problems.
The thing that bugged me the most was the actual time travel. This book wasn't like Sea of Tranquility by Mandel. (A book I happened to be reading at the same time and after these two I don't want to read any more time travel for a very long time.) In that book, time travel is a fact that's never explained. It just exists and no further detail is given. That's fine. Atomic Anna is also unlike Andy Weir books. Weir explains the science behind his concepts in depth, but also in a way that the layperson can basically understand them. This book falls somewhere in the middle. Barenbaum throws scientific and mathematical terminology out like she's trying to win a prize for the most times graviton can be used in a book. We get liberal sprinkles of electromagnetism, waves, fission, Einstein, etc. but no actual explanation of what those mean. And frankly, I don't want to know. I wanted a story to entertain me, not bring me back in time to college level astrophysics. Nothing was explained well enough that I actually understood any of the theory behind time travel, but the science took up so many pages that I got bored and had to skim to keep from falling asleep.
Overall, an okay character study that needed some serious editing and different branding.