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Quite an impressive novel though not timeless. Despite all of our problems today the world has made progress. Maybe this serves as a reminder to be ever vigilant against backsliding, but also how little has changed. I can't find any fault in this book but the characters don't speak to me. I don't see myself in any of the protagonists or antagonists. Perhaps a view from one of the other men on the scab train could have shown someone lost in it all and struggling to make sense and choose sides.

Probably the last KSR novel which does make me sad. It was very much of the form for one of their novels. There were some threads that could have been developed more and I thought this would get a LOT darker before hope reemerged. I kind of think that it should have gotten darker. At times I felt like this was the most Neal Stephenson of KSR novels.

I had asked for a recommendation of a novel about labour so this wasn't really what I expected. I had wanted to read a Dashiell Hammett novel and this is a probably the only hard boiled crime novel I will read. It was true to form and as hard bitten as I expected. I was surprised at some of criminal behaviour of the "good guy" protagonist, I hadn't understood that element of the genre.

I didn't enjoy this novel as much as the prior Bas-Lag novels. There was something incoherent and incomplete about it and the result was that it didn't fit together for me. There was a lot to like.

This could have been, should have been, a much shorter book. I do like books with a languorous pace but this one was just too repetitive and it was too repetitive. Nothing would have suffered if a third had been excised.

Having a hard time getting through it. It is so tediously slow in dragging out the plot. It feels repetitive. I am fine with languorous paced novels if they spend their time with descriptive language or increasing the depth of characters or scene. Doomsday Book doesn't feel like that. Find out where Bassingame is fishing, Badri said there was no slippage, make some phone calls, rinse and repeat.

I did really enjoy Bellweather and had high hopes for Doomsday Book so it has been somewhat of a let down.

Not the most accurate but entertaining despite being dated. The final section after annexation was unexpected for a novel of the time.