lanster's reviews
123 reviews

This book went in such unexpected directions. Sometimes it was dreamlike, other times it was obscure, with stories in stories and worlds within worlds which seems to be Crowley's style. But having finished it I would love to reread it knowing what I know. It was a very refreshing take on the post-apocalyptic genre, almost utopian in parts, focussing on how humans cope philosophically instead of raw survival.

This novel is really ambitious for how short it is. I actually wish it was a bit longer and could of explored some of the scenes or characters further.

It took me a while to warm into this book, the first 50 or so pages jumps around a lot and it's not clear what the main threads are. The prose felt slightly unnatural at first as well. But once the writing clicked the rest of the chapters flowed past.

It was a pretty fun read in a pretty rare setting. The exploration of its various themes (fate, desire, gender etc) was surprisingly mature. The characters were well written and stood out.

Towards the end it became a bit too melodramatic for my tastes.

Also I didn't understand the point

fisting

scene, felt completely out of tone with rest of the book and didn't add anything, especially because after that

Ma & Zhu barely interact

.

Towards the end I was skipping pages wishing it to be over sooner. I didn't give it enough attention to warrant a thorough critique, but on the surface I found it very tedious (probably because it reminded me of going to church).

The morals and themes explored were plain: people are stupid, god will not save you etc. The writing was simple. Little in this text challenges you.

There were some enjoyable moments however.

I rarely DNF a book, but 180 pages in I had to give up. At first it seems like a deep and novel story, but under the window-dressing it does not have much quality to offer.

When Mycroft jumped out of a window and stopped a random assault (rape?) from happening in an alley below, which read like a cheesy scene out of some superhero movie: "oh sh** its Mycroft the bad-ass, its not worth it bro lets go" I just laughed and decided to stop there.  I thought this must be a joke, and part of me wondered if Mycroft is just an unreliable narrator making himself out to be something he's not in his own story, but reading other reviewers comments its just not that deep a book.

The characters are not interesting. I particularly dislike it in a novel when every character is rich, powerful and absolutely awesome. It comes across vert flat to me, for example every world leader has Mycroft on speed dial because he's so popular and awesome (bore). Or how Mycroft's friends are all world-famous bad asses (bore).

The world building feels like a childish thought experiment where all humans will happily divide themselves into one of 7 clans. Like some sort of global sorting hat from Harry Potter. One clan (of ~2 Billion people) is full of Olympic athletes who all wear doc martins that they colour in with pens? What? Absolutely everyone has migrated to this way of life (with religion being outlawed), with a hand wavy 'everyone else that disagreed died in the war'.

For how 'globe spanning' the characters and world was supposed to be it all felt like different shades of the same setting, and each character was a different shade of 'intelligent, cool, bad-ass'. It's just so detached from the reality of humans as a species that I cannot take anything the book seriously.

Its a shame because Bridger and Carlyle seemed interesting but just after they are introduced they disappear and the plot becomes much more tedious.