A review by terrypaulpearce
Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta by Doris Lessing

3.0

I eventually gave up on this one. It had some great ideas, but by about a third of the way through I felt I'd absorbed them, and the style, while beautiful occasionally, was often dry and slightly alienating. Which I guess was maybe the effect she was going for to some extent -- it's supposed to be a collection of reports and found notes about Earth written by another race whose minds are on higher levels, but it got quite tedious to read. As contrast I read A Canticle for Liebowitz straight afterwards, which has some similar values and is similarly aged classic sci-fi, but has aged very much better, I found.