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bluestarfish's review
3.0
There is no doubt about the fact that Adam Roberts writes interesting science fiction. It seems new and fresh and slightly bonkers (and based on two books, containing some rather gruesome moments). This book takes the form a criminal (there are only a handful in this universe/time) writing letters to a stone reflecting on what took her/him there. This is a utopia where politics and money are played at, nanotech has rendered common human ailments into history, and faster than light travel is possible.
the_cat's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
carterimln's review
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
pezski's review
4.0
Roberts' books are always clever - superbly far-out ideas and excellent plots - and his writing is getting better with each book. Not just the prose, although that is, but the way he handles the themes and morals. I don't think there is another writer like him - hardest of the hard science fiction based in real science (if wildly extrapolated), with a real literary sensibility; SF as a mirror for the real world, like Balllard and Banks and le Guin. Awesome stuff.
12dejamoo's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
This book is miles away from most things I read. I've never read science fiction I don't think, and so this was really a big step out of my comfort zone. The book gave me that sort of masculine voice vibe which I'm never sure about - sometimes it takes away from the enjoyment of a book and sometimes it's just there. I liked the world building in this book - it felt well developed without being lingered over too long, and the added 'Translator's Notes' in the footnotes made the entire book feel like an artefact. However I think my main complaints were ones of general reading experience - I enjoyed a lot about this book but it had a certain vibe which just meant I am not raring to go pick up anything else by Roberts. I also was unsatisfied by the reveal at the end. I felt the 'who' was good but the 'how' and 'why' were a bit too sci-fi-out-of-this-world-physics-conceptual for me to grasp. Maybe I'm just not used to the genre so I am not understanding it properly.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Gore, and Blood
Moderate: Self harm
Minor: Transphobia and Suicidal thoughts
It's less transphobia and more ignorance - the narrator often refers to people as changing between 'girls' and 'boys' when their genitals change despite admitting to identifying as a male despite currently having genitals consistent with AFAB peoplesilesti's review
4.0
I really like this. The perspective for the storytelling, letters to an inanimate object, lends an additional layer to the mix which worked well. No spoilers, but I did kind of like Ae the main protagonist despite everything!
ericlawton's review
4.0
As usual, Roberts addresses social issues with some weird physics twists that come near the end. In this case, a murderer confronts his past when being pressured to commit an even more horrific crime.
I'm on my second reading of Roberts' books.
I'm on my second reading of Roberts' books.
mckitterick's review
4.0
I had to go back through Adam Roberts' STONE after first reading, because I found it the most inventive, well-written, powerful, insightful, and discomforting book I'd read in a long time. If you haven't read it, you really must.
I won't say too much about it so as not to ruin your read (so much of the story is solving the mystery of who has hired our narrator to kill 60 million people, and why?), but I will say that Roberts does an enviable job of tying an idea about quantum state idea into the novel's themes,
characters, and even plot movement! I was both impressed and irritated, because now he's taken this very cool notion away from the rest of us.
For a good 20 or 30 pages, I kept wanting to put the book down, because it is written in a strange manner (narrated to a stone, for pete's sake!), and the main character is difficult to like. However, Roberts pulls off another coup when he makes you hope that the protagonist will succeed in murdering a world full of human beings - if only to learn the WHO and WHY.
Never have I read such a believable, emotionally true tale of a truly crazy and bad person. Scenes of horror and psychological pain are rendered in a sparse, distant manner - scenes that, when I relayed them to my wife, made her tell me to stop. But if Roberts had turned the emotional wheel up just a few degrees, I would have closed the covers. What a fine job.
The resolution is worth the rest of the read, by the way. As is much of Roberts' discussion of how quantum physics affects the very state of the universe. Here is the rare SF novel where you truly could not remove any of the SFnal elements without destroying the story, ideas, message, and all the rest. Even the protagonist's character itself depends on the SFnal elements!
I won't say too much about it so as not to ruin your read (so much of the story is solving the mystery of who has hired our narrator to kill 60 million people, and why?), but I will say that Roberts does an enviable job of tying an idea about quantum state idea into the novel's themes,
characters, and even plot movement! I was both impressed and irritated, because now he's taken this very cool notion away from the rest of us.
For a good 20 or 30 pages, I kept wanting to put the book down, because it is written in a strange manner (narrated to a stone, for pete's sake!), and the main character is difficult to like. However, Roberts pulls off another coup when he makes you hope that the protagonist will succeed in murdering a world full of human beings - if only to learn the WHO and WHY.
Never have I read such a believable, emotionally true tale of a truly crazy and bad person. Scenes of horror and psychological pain are rendered in a sparse, distant manner - scenes that, when I relayed them to my wife, made her tell me to stop. But if Roberts had turned the emotional wheel up just a few degrees, I would have closed the covers. What a fine job.
The resolution is worth the rest of the read, by the way. As is much of Roberts' discussion of how quantum physics affects the very state of the universe. Here is the rare SF novel where you truly could not remove any of the SFnal elements without destroying the story, ideas, message, and all the rest. Even the protagonist's character itself depends on the SFnal elements!