YouNaughtyMonsters rated Kindred: 4 stars
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from …
Mostly reading SF, but with some Graham Green and Hollinghurst in there too.
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Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from …
In the aftermath of the events described in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, George Smiley attempts to bring the Circus …
The story of how we colonise a new world, and the discovery of an ancient secret that will change our …
The very far future: The Galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, chill white dwarfs. The age …
"Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. Archaeologist …
Overly sentimental, disjointed, and wasteful of its actual good ideas.
The storyline feels like it was made up as a way to put characters in certain situations, which in turn made it all feel contrived. On top of that, I found it very hard to care about any of the characters (bar Kirin), so whenever they were in some faux danger (it's the future no one is really in danger) I didn't even really mind the outcome. Sometimes I even hoped for the worst, they were all so entitled and lothesome.
The actual world building is fine, but it really feels like KSR put in a lot of effort and wasted it on a storyline that doesn't really deserve such a grand stage. I can see what KSR was trying to do at times, revisiting some ideas about how we see ourselves that they tried in The Wild Shore, but …
Overly sentimental, disjointed, and wasteful of its actual good ideas.
The storyline feels like it was made up as a way to put characters in certain situations, which in turn made it all feel contrived. On top of that, I found it very hard to care about any of the characters (bar Kirin), so whenever they were in some faux danger (it's the future no one is really in danger) I didn't even really mind the outcome. Sometimes I even hoped for the worst, they were all so entitled and lothesome.
The actual world building is fine, but it really feels like KSR put in a lot of effort and wasted it on a storyline that doesn't really deserve such a grand stage. I can see what KSR was trying to do at times, revisiting some ideas about how we see ourselves that they tried in The Wild Shore, but as I don't care about the actors, why do I think about how they build up images of others over time?
I'll not go into the ending as this would be spoilers, but I wouldn't recommend this to even fans of KSR let alone SF. If you want to read about how arrogant, classist and frankly disappointing the future of humanity might be, go ahead.
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