Reviews and Comments

Despite the fact that I'd like their premise to be true, and that it seems there is truth to the idea that "primitive" societies in the past were more complex and interactive than we once thought, the authors have cherry picked data and built a variety of straw men to dismantle in order to recklessly extrapolate and generalize to make an argument about what they would like society to be like.

Read this book with a lot of caution, and do some other reading of both the specific examples they discuss, and also of the general context and premises that they put forward. They present a lot of information and it is easy to take them at their word if you have no knowledge of these or related fields.

An interesting story with compelling characters, I'm left with what I feel is a good sense of what life was like for the folks at Turtle Mountain Reservation at that time. Though the book was compelling, I think it would have benefited by sticking to the main story a bit more and being a bit shorter.

Engaging read, I enjoyed it quite a lot. It is a fairly basic, and despite all the twists and turns, in the main, a predictable plot. The main character, and others, have a really crappy and sad existence, but because of the style of the book, it doesn't really bring out any depth of feeling in the reader. It reminded me of an anecdote, whether true or not, about the making of the first Star Wars movie in 1977. Apparently, after the heroes were trapped in the trash compactor, Mark Hamill asked why, in the next scene, their hair wasn't wet. Harrison Ford apparently replied, "It ain't that kind of movie kid." Well The Hunger Games "ain't that kind of book", but it's well worth a read.

I enjoyed reading this book, and it was interesting. I thought the author did a good job of not making the society be dystopian or clearly bad or evil, but rather just a different decision about what makes a happy society. I felt the ending was weak in many ways however.

Somehow one of the most upsetting books I've read.

Certainly has good qualities, but feels to me like it could use a serious edit to improve story flow.

Has some appeal but shows its age. It seems to me like it could be improved by a good edit.

I'd really go 3.5 on this one but it needs to be rounded up not down. I liked how that despite having many dramatic things going on, it was written in a very non dramatic or over the top kind of way. It was more about regular people facing important and unusual challenges.

The story is told in a fun way, with an interesting time travel concept, and does a great job of using the time travel to explore relationships between people, what we know about one another, and what it means to be you. Great book.

Great book. Well written and engaging with an interesting and thought provoking story.