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Adam Roberts is commonly described as one of the UK's most important writers of SF. He is the author of numerous novels and literary parodies. He is Professor of 19th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, London University and has written a number of critical works on both SF and 19th Century poetry. He is a contributor to the SF ENCYCLOPEDIA.
8 Reviews
3.0

CaveInn
Created 7 months agoShare
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bibliophilicjester
Created 7 months agoShare
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“here we are about a month after i read this...
more will come back to me as i type, but the overall feeling is a memory of meh. (a note from end of review me lol)
i know i was interested in this after being disappointed by ascension by nicholas binge, so i thought i'd try a different mysterious mountain scifi-ish book. this was the same sort of meh. it starts out with some super pretentious people on a ship who aren't exactly humans, and some other animals and...it's complicated on the ship. we get some glimpses into this later on. the synopsis makes it sound like it's even, but most of the book takes place in a near future earth. specifically in the united states, which is a problem for me. why? ah. this is a british author. the character actions feel distinctly british except for the few american city name drops. it reminded me a bit of parable of the sower, which i have very mixed feelings about. and yes, guns make an appearance in this book bc of course they fucking do. UGH. i won't rant bc i really get off track with this type of anger = ) there's also a character who "knows exactly where he is on the spectrum" (i think that's how it's said), and i was obviously worried.
so we're following the main...character. lol. i think she's 17 at the start of the book? and her friend group who have created a private network or something? idk. basically the government is after them with shadowy law enforcement and guns (of course). there's also a side thing about people who are literally jacked into their phones bc of some bio warfare type thing that strips people's memories. also the main girl whose name i can't remember is a beekeeper. she's separated from her friends at the beginning, and we occasionally got to see a friend pov, which i liked. then toward the end we get the spaceship people again and things wrap up there but also don't and it's cleverly connected but also really not directly lol even the author said in the acknowledgements that some people thought it was super obvious, and others didn't get how they were related at all. i think i fall somewhere in the middle. a solid MEH.
i will say, there was a twist that was very cleverly done, and i didn't see it until a few pages before the reveal when the hints become obvious. it was one of those i should've seen but i missed it, and i love that!! the spaceship parts in particular were exceptionally pretentious. but a lot of the books either alludes to or directly references literature and doesn't explain, so if you haven't read the book or don't at least have the social context of the reference, it'll go over your head. which can be infuriating. i got most of the references and it infuriated me lol as far as it being cleverly tied to dante's inferno...ehhhhhh idk about that. i see what roberts was going for, but i'm not convinced we actually got there. i'd definitely try another book by this author, though! let's hope it's not set in the US.”

Yusufdel
Created almost 2 years agoShare
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Thomas
Created about 2 years agoShare
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“this book started at a two and impressed me into a four. weird that not answering the main mystery of the plot didn’t bug me much at all”

Patrick Elsey
Created almost 3 years agoShare
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About Adam Roberts
Adam Roberts is commonly described as one of the UK's most important writers of SF. He is the author of numerous novels and literary parodies. He is Professor of 19th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, London University and has written a number of critical works on both SF and 19th Century poetry. He is a contributor to the SF ENCYCLOPEDIA.
Other books by Adam Roberts
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