A review by itshaldun
Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky

dark sad tense medium-paced

2.0

This is the book that inspired the legendary film Stalker, and introduced to the world the concept of zones filled with hazards beyond human comprehension two decades before Chernobyl happened. The point is, it is an important book.

There are lots to love here in isolation. The parts where Stalker ventures into the Zone are one of the tensest things I’ve ever read in my entire life. The concept of how an advance alien visit might actually look like (hint, the title) is really interesting and original. The alien artifacts are straight out of SCP entries (actually the other way around, of course)

But after the first chapter, I quickly started losing interest in the book and never quite recovered it. The story focuses too much on uninteresting side characters and story lines that are probably social commentary on the life in the Soviet Union at the time, but I honestly couldn’t care less.

I think the book ended up being less than sum of its parts for me. Maybe I was not in the mood for it, maybe it is character growth on my side, who knows?

Buy European, BYEEEEEEE