Throughout the course of this book, I've noticed a lot of trouble with organization and delivery of information, among other things. At first I just thought the author was just trying to do something different, that it was his intention to let us sort things out ourselves instead of putting it all on the table in plain english. Even that, however, does not excuse the shoddy job of putting this thing together. Then it hit me: all the casual pot-smoking, the alien conspiracies, and the government cover-ups and corruption all led me to one conclusion. And that conclusion is that it's highly probable that Ken Macleod is a total stoner. Not only that, but he could've been baked while writing this thing, which would explain a lot. I'm not against the green herb at all, having had some before, but c'mon man, business before pleasure! There's a reason that ideas that you get while high sound stupid when you pull yourself together, and that reason is that the smoke chokes your brain, making you into a stupid person for awhile. Not the best state of mind to be writing a book in.
I guess I'm expected to write a review of some sort for this book, so here it is. The story was complex and not fluidly organized, something that I as well as others have not taken well to. It was also slow in the beginning but did get better halfway through, that's one thing it's got going for it at least. When it comes to slow beginnings Stephen King is the worst so at least Macleod isn't that bad.
The setting of the high-tech near-future and the low-tech distant future seemed fairly original from my standpoint, a plus for this book.
The characters weren't completely shallow, however they appeared to be only fleshed out to the extent that Macleod could say that he gave them depth and not be lying, kind of half-assed really. I don't care one way or another, I'm just not accustomed to it that's all.
We really could've done without the romance factor here and reading about sex was kind of awkward, but at least he didn't get too descriptive about it most of the time.
My final rating for this story is 3 out of 5 stars, and my advice to anyone reading this is to not decide whether or not to read this book based on the opinions of one man, official critic or not. It did win some kind of award after all, that's got to be worth something.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
This is an interesting view on how the book was written. Having never done drugs I didn't think about it from that perspective but it does seem possible.
I assure you all I was not smoking weed while writing or thinking about this book!
Post a Comment