Craig Hallstrom

I highly recommend chapters 1 and 87. These were the only chapters that succeeded to create any emotional connection. The rest of the ‘novel’ was a boring mélange of lecture, weird and unnecessary anthropomorphisms, and a narrative with characters who do nothing. The survivor of chapter 1 could have been an interesting exploration of survival. He struggles with PTSD, briefly kidnaps (most boring abduction ever) the other almost character. In the end he dies in hospice without having really done anything the whole novel other than that very brief kidnapping. The only other character never has any emotions to speak of. She briefly faces danger at the kidnapping but her reaction to it seems odd and displaced. I didn’t care about her before the abduction and I didn’t much care afterward. There are interesting things happening in the world but those which are shown ‘on stage’ are minor and not very exciting. There are interesting ideas here. The dangers of global warming and the complexity is well presented. The proposed solutions and the impediments to achieving then are interesting as well. The presentation is just disjointed and awful. I am not against atypical narratives. I loved Dracula. I loved julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. I enjoyed the odd story structure of Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Cloud Atlas was a marvel. I even enjoyed the detached characters in Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem. I understand that Robinson has created a narrative style that is challenging and has these jumps from narrative to disembodied lecture and others. As someone new to this approach I may not get it, but reading others’ reviews of this book it seems I am not entirely alone in not being engaged by it here. Too much lecture (though the content of the lecture were good). Too many board meetings. Too many characters that are completely unnecessary. Mary did nothing the entire book - therefore I don’t care how she feels as she retires.