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salicos 's review for:
Blindsight
by Peter Watts
5/5 - Highly recommend
(Formatting is so that folks with ADHD can more easily read my review – I’ve bolded the most important information for you!)
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was quick-paced enough to keep my attention but not so quick that I didn't know what was going on. It was a bit of a wild ride from start to finish, with many sections that were utterly terrifying. Not in the jumpscare way either – real, philosophical, make-you-think horror. I appreciate a book that can make my heart race. I'm an avid fan of horror and it usually takes a lot to really creep me out.
I see some people in the reviews saying that they didn't like having to Google words so often in this book - I personally think that's a bonus because I love to learn new things while I read. Maybe I'm just a nerd. Something to keep in mind, however, is that I read on apple books on my phone, so it's a lot easier for me to just highlight a word and click "look up". I don't have to stop and pull out my phone to search for a definition, so searching for a word is probably far less distracting for me than it may be for others. A lot of the terms were psychology-related, and as someone who is very interested in both science fiction and psychology, this book almost felt like it was made for me.
The characterization in this book is great - every character has a distinct personality and speech pattern so it's easy to figure out who's speaking even if there aren't any dialogue tags. The different speech patterns of the characters were an interesting and creative choice. I’ve never seen such drastic differences between characters, of course in other books characters have different speech patterns, but in this book the author pushes it further. Sarasti only speaks in the present tense, Cunningham avoids pronouns, etc. I think this was a cool way of doing things.
I related to Siri and his insecurities and I think the slow reveal of his backstory scattered through the book really added punch to the character. His struggles with his uncaring mother, messed up dating history, his habit of analyzing people, and lack of real friends really hit my mentally ill monkey brain in all the right places to make me really empathize with him.
I appreciated that the author didn’t waste much time explaining the world to us. It was a little disorienting at first but not disorienting enough to make me stop reading. I think it makes more sense that the world is exposed to us through Siri’s eyes as he sees it, as though he’s telling the story to someone who already exists in his world. We learn about the world through Siri’s opinions about it, and it flows better than if the author were to have broken off every few pages to explain a new concept to us. This happens a couple of times, of course, but it flows well enough with Siri’s thoughts that it doesn’t distract from the main storyline at all.
Something small that I liked was the capitalization of the word “Humans” – you think about popular science fiction like Star Trek and you see alien races like Vulcans and Klingons capitalized as proper nouns but Humans aren’t. It’s always been something that bothered me a little bit so seeing Humans being used as a proper noun in this book was refreshing.
Overall, I found this book to be entertaining and enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in near-future science fiction and who has a bit of a stomach for horror.
(Formatting is so that folks with ADHD can more easily read my review – I’ve bolded the most important information for you!)
---------------------
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was quick-paced enough to keep my attention but not so quick that I didn't know what was going on. It was a bit of a wild ride from start to finish, with many sections that were utterly terrifying. Not in the jumpscare way either – real, philosophical, make-you-think horror. I appreciate a book that can make my heart race. I'm an avid fan of horror and it usually takes a lot to really creep me out.
I see some people in the reviews saying that they didn't like having to Google words so often in this book - I personally think that's a bonus because I love to learn new things while I read. Maybe I'm just a nerd. Something to keep in mind, however, is that I read on apple books on my phone, so it's a lot easier for me to just highlight a word and click "look up". I don't have to stop and pull out my phone to search for a definition, so searching for a word is probably far less distracting for me than it may be for others. A lot of the terms were psychology-related, and as someone who is very interested in both science fiction and psychology, this book almost felt like it was made for me.
The characterization in this book is great - every character has a distinct personality and speech pattern so it's easy to figure out who's speaking even if there aren't any dialogue tags. The different speech patterns of the characters were an interesting and creative choice. I’ve never seen such drastic differences between characters, of course in other books characters have different speech patterns, but in this book the author pushes it further. Sarasti only speaks in the present tense, Cunningham avoids pronouns, etc. I think this was a cool way of doing things.
I related to Siri and his insecurities and I think the slow reveal of his backstory scattered through the book really added punch to the character. His struggles with his uncaring mother, messed up dating history, his habit of analyzing people, and lack of real friends really hit my mentally ill monkey brain in all the right places to make me really empathize with him.
I appreciated that the author didn’t waste much time explaining the world to us. It was a little disorienting at first but not disorienting enough to make me stop reading. I think it makes more sense that the world is exposed to us through Siri’s eyes as he sees it, as though he’s telling the story to someone who already exists in his world. We learn about the world through Siri’s opinions about it, and it flows better than if the author were to have broken off every few pages to explain a new concept to us. This happens a couple of times, of course, but it flows well enough with Siri’s thoughts that it doesn’t distract from the main storyline at all.
Something small that I liked was the capitalization of the word “Humans” – you think about popular science fiction like Star Trek and you see alien races like Vulcans and Klingons capitalized as proper nouns but Humans aren’t. It’s always been something that bothered me a little bit so seeing Humans being used as a proper noun in this book was refreshing.
Overall, I found this book to be entertaining and enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in near-future science fiction and who has a bit of a stomach for horror.