blackbrokkoli reviewed Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds (Poseidon's Children, #1)
Review of 'Blue Remembered Earth' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I'm surprisingly disappointed by this.
I have the general feeling that Reynolds got lost in researching and implementing sci-fi concepts in incredible detail, at the cost of everything else: Story, characters, dialogue, suspense. Some examples:
The high-level story is a kind of scavenger hunt setup that feels very linear, like a quest in a mid-tier RPG. Without spoiling details, it also seems to turns out to be 100% pointless unless I'm missing something.
The two main characters feel incredibly bland, and while they are supposed to be polar opposites in their personal beliefs, you could literally swap their positions and the book wouldn't change. An even worse offender is Jumai, a side character: She's an high-tech salvage expert, an ex of the male lead, and has a bit of an identity crisis. How is this intriguing setup used? She opens one security door (that may as well have not existed …
I'm surprisingly disappointed by this.
I have the general feeling that Reynolds got lost in researching and implementing sci-fi concepts in incredible detail, at the cost of everything else: Story, characters, dialogue, suspense. Some examples:
The high-level story is a kind of scavenger hunt setup that feels very linear, like a quest in a mid-tier RPG. Without spoiling details, it also seems to turns out to be 100% pointless unless I'm missing something.
The two main characters feel incredibly bland, and while they are supposed to be polar opposites in their personal beliefs, you could literally swap their positions and the book wouldn't change. An even worse offender is Jumai, a side character: She's an high-tech salvage expert, an ex of the male lead, and has a bit of an identity crisis. How is this intriguing setup used? She opens one security door (that may as well have not existed as far as the story goes) and has some wholesome small talk with the protagonist. That's it.
The Pans are an important faction in the book. Again without going into spoilers, they are a mysterious, Atlantis-esque, biohacking political power. Interesting! However, below the patina of surface inventions, they could literally be any other organization ever: Umbrella Corp, the Catholic Church, Havard University, the government of Belgium, you name it. In fact, they are two other powerful and rich factions in the book (the Akinya family and Plexus) which feel exactly the same.
The book is not actually lacking pain, terror, grief, injury and death. However, Reynolds seems to go to great pains to have all of these scenes happen either literally off-stage or to describe them in the riveting style of Wikipedia World News. That generates the unfortunate feeling that nothing happens for 85% of the book.
Overall, while I can recommend the author, I cannot recommend this book.