A review by killa_bunnies
Blindsight by Peter Watts

challenging dark informative tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Well, I heard a lot about this book, but whoa, I did not expect that… First thing first, it is a heavy read. Not in terms of the story itself, but because of all the thoughts Peter Watts put in this book. And you could be sure there is a lot of fuel for thoughts. The fact that Watts is an academic himself, a marine biologist to be specific, is clear from the very first pages. He is considered as an author of hard science fiction, meaning there is a science theory behind everything in the book (it goes beyond that, here Watts added also footnotes, citations and list of additional reads and studies). The sheer amount of work and research beyond this story is simply stunning. But it takes its toll, since many scientific terms and theories referenced here want you to put the book down and go to wiki to read more before coming back. Don’t get me wrong, I love that, but be ready – it is not an easy read, the tempo is slow-ish and if you are not an English native speaker, you might spend more time with a dictionary than you might like. 

That aside, the whole story reimagining the first contact scenario, a meeting with an extraterrestrial life form, is going through several avenues of current science, even bringing to life vampires as another species parallel to human evolution (with charming scientifically probable way explaining the “crucifix glitch”). But the overall theme here is consciousness and sentience of one’s mind. Free will basically does not exist as we are slaves to our biological processes and instinctive behaviour, that basically denies any free will. The latter is more explored in the follow up book, Echopraxia. But be aware that this is just my very simplified view here. These themes are explored from different angles and under different conditions, so it will give you a lot of thoughts. 

So all in all, if you are a geek like me and love to have a story leaning towards a hard scientific point of view, stemming from our current knowledge of the world, this is a perfect book for you. If you expect an action story full of space vampires, well, you will get it, but not in the way you might think. Would recommend it in any case.