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timinbc's review against another edition
3.0
I gave four stars to each of Wilson's "Spin" books, but not this one. 2.5-3, depending on author's intent, see below.
I think in the end this interesting idea just couldn't support a novel-length story. The idea deserved to be explored, and now that's been done, and meh.
I can forgive a bit of handwaving about how the socio tests work. Especially when one scene is set in a bar in my current home town, and others in my former home town.
But we have some stock characters - the kindly gramma types, the stiff racist dad, the bullying brother, the weak kid, the protagonist who is there so things can happen to him, the hey-man-far-out girl. We have some stock interactions (boy meets girl, you know they'll be in the sack two pages later and sure enough, they are, and you know she'll break his heart, and yep, she does).
The book is a quick read, perhaps because the science and the characters don't ask much of us.
We have an antagonist group, the Het, who seem to be a type-A biker gang. Odd that the genius scientist didn't seem to put any time into thinking about what each like-works-with-like group could lead to. In a plausible world he would have, but then we wouldn't have had a book. A story about a sociologist predicting that groupings would fail and deciding NOT to create them would be dull (about as dull as, say, someone deciding not to mess with preserved dinosaur DNA). And here we find that a book in which the groups ARE created leads to an unsatisfactory result too.
There's a buildup over several chapters of "FOUR hours till the power goes out" ... "THREE hours" ... "two hours" -- and then, finally, the power goes out and it's nothing more than a plot device to start things happening. These days, you want to impress me in SF, you gotta go with "that was when the SUN went out" - which in fact happened in the book I read before this one.
So we approach the climax. A is bad, we want to stop him, they want to stop us from stopping him. Hostage crisis, of course. Standoff, of course. Hastily cobbled-together ending breaks the standoff.
And then a wrap-up that was not only weak but also annoying, we have Whoa! Suddenly the libertarian Taus are a monolithic cult, obedient to the leaders they don't have except that they do? What are they, Scientologists? Harper Conservatives? Now, I accept that Wilson might have been showing us that the affinity process will do that even to the like-wow-man Taus - but I don't think it was intentional. RC, if you're reading this - was it?
Anyway, we have these groups that trust the heck out of each other, and now every single one of them must be wondering, "Have I drifted? Will I wake up one morning in the gutter with my suitcase?" Again, maybe that was intentional. Playing that point up and the action down might have made the book work better for me.
The ending appears to plant the seeds of a second novel here, in which people get together based on a different algorithm. This feels a bit like the mad scientist after the monster's dead saying, "Perhaps I should have used a DOLPHIN brain, ahahaha!"
I think in the end this interesting idea just couldn't support a novel-length story. The idea deserved to be explored, and now that's been done, and meh.
I can forgive a bit of handwaving about how the socio tests work. Especially when one scene is set in a bar in my current home town, and others in my former home town.
But we have some stock characters - the kindly gramma types, the stiff racist dad, the bullying brother, the weak kid, the protagonist who is there so things can happen to him, the hey-man-far-out girl. We have some stock interactions (boy meets girl, you know they'll be in the sack two pages later and sure enough, they are, and you know she'll break his heart, and yep, she does).
The book is a quick read, perhaps because the science and the characters don't ask much of us.
We have an antagonist group, the Het, who seem to be a type-A biker gang. Odd that the genius scientist didn't seem to put any time into thinking about what each like-works-with-like group could lead to. In a plausible world he would have, but then we wouldn't have had a book. A story about a sociologist predicting that groupings would fail and deciding NOT to create them would be dull (about as dull as, say, someone deciding not to mess with preserved dinosaur DNA). And here we find that a book in which the groups ARE created leads to an unsatisfactory result too.
There's a buildup over several chapters of "FOUR hours till the power goes out" ... "THREE hours" ... "two hours" -- and then, finally, the power goes out and it's nothing more than a plot device to start things happening. These days, you want to impress me in SF, you gotta go with "that was when the SUN went out" - which in fact happened in the book I read before this one.
So we approach the climax. A is bad, we want to stop him, they want to stop us from stopping him. Hostage crisis, of course. Standoff, of course. Hastily cobbled-together ending breaks the standoff.
And then a wrap-up that was not only weak but also annoying, we have
Spoiler
You're out of the group because your social measures drifted. We knew you lied, and we understood that it's because you weren't one of us anymore. Because, you see, a true Tau COULDN'T have lied like that to another Tau."Anyway, we have these groups that trust the heck out of each other, and now every single one of them must be wondering, "Have I drifted? Will I wake up one morning in the gutter with my suitcase?" Again, maybe that was intentional. Playing that point up and the action down might have made the book work better for me.
The ending appears to plant the seeds of a second novel here, in which people get together based on a different algorithm. This feels a bit like the mad scientist after the monster's dead saying, "Perhaps I should have used a DOLPHIN brain, ahahaha!"
emily98griffin's review against another edition
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.75
subparcupcake's review against another edition
3.0
I liked the premise more than I liked the actual execution, but still not a bad book overall. Was it all I hoped it would be? No. Was it still worth reading? Definitely.
hexe_19's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
annelisegordon's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
liammasters's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
bunrab's review against another edition
3.0
Somewhere between the "Divergent" YA books and Nancy Kress's Sleepless stuff. But since it is like those, it has less of the attraction of novelty. And one gets really tired of teleodynamics this and teleodynamics that. All in all, not a waste of the molecules it took to make it, but not something to go out of your way to find, either, unless you are a fan of Wilson. This book has the same feeling of a slightly let-down ending as Chronoliths did. Obviously some people were more excited than I was about that book, since it got nominated for a bunch of awards, and so those people will probably be more excited than I am about this one. But my opinion is, not bad but not really novel or exciting either.
tani's review against another edition
3.0
I listened to the audiobook of this. I usually put a warning up before my audiobook reviews about how I'm still kind of iffy on audiobooks, and am not quite sure if my rating would have been the same if I had read it. Except in this case, I think my rating might have been worse if I'd read it? In this case, I think that Scott Brick, the narrator, really lent a lot of emotion to the story that I might not have felt as strongly if I had just been reading the book. So kudos to him for that.
One of the things that I've been thinking about recently, usually after looking at my Facebook page, is that the world would be a far better place if we all had more patience and understanding for the other people who share the world with us. How does that relate to this book? The Tau affinity, as we see it through Adam's eyes, is a great example of this. Taus support each other through everything life throws at them, and it's great. Taus prosper enormously with the help of other Taus. However, by that same token, the Taus tend to turn away from people who are not members of Tau. It doesn't matter if those people are family members or friends of Taus - they are disdained. They are treated as less than human. So, with these thoughts running through my head in real life, I had a really hard time liking or even slightly caring about any of the Taus.
In fact, I quite disliked two of the more prominent Tau characters, Amanda and Damien. That made it really hard for me to get behind all of their plots and plans. It also made it really hard for me to understand where Adam was coming from with his devotion to Tau. I wish there had been a bit more development to the section where Adam was becoming a Tau because although I understood intellectually why he was so fanatic about it, it didn't click emotionally. Considering the way that Adam subsequently shapes his life around Tau, I think the book would have worked a lot better if that emotional connection had been better established for me.
I did otherwise enjoy the pacing of the action. I felt like the action moved at a good clip, and I never got bored listening to the story. The scale did feel a little small given how much emphasis was placed on how the affinities were changing the world, but I see how that created a manageable story for Wilson to tell. I also thought that the writing itself had some lovely moments. I was happy with the way that the story ended as well.
I guess I just spent too much time shaking my head, wondering what in the world Adam was thinking, to give the book a higher rating.
One of the things that I've been thinking about recently, usually after looking at my Facebook page, is that the world would be a far better place if we all had more patience and understanding for the other people who share the world with us. How does that relate to this book? The Tau affinity, as we see it through Adam's eyes, is a great example of this. Taus support each other through everything life throws at them, and it's great. Taus prosper enormously with the help of other Taus. However, by that same token, the Taus tend to turn away from people who are not members of Tau. It doesn't matter if those people are family members or friends of Taus - they are disdained. They are treated as less than human. So, with these thoughts running through my head in real life, I had a really hard time liking or even slightly caring about any of the Taus.
In fact, I quite disliked two of the more prominent Tau characters, Amanda and Damien. That made it really hard for me to get behind all of their plots and plans. It also made it really hard for me to understand where Adam was coming from with his devotion to Tau. I wish there had been a bit more development to the section where Adam was becoming a Tau because although I understood intellectually why he was so fanatic about it, it didn't click emotionally. Considering the way that Adam subsequently shapes his life around Tau, I think the book would have worked a lot better if that emotional connection had been better established for me.
I did otherwise enjoy the pacing of the action. I felt like the action moved at a good clip, and I never got bored listening to the story. The scale did feel a little small given how much emphasis was placed on how the affinities were changing the world, but I see how that created a manageable story for Wilson to tell. I also thought that the writing itself had some lovely moments. I was happy with the way that the story ended as well.
I guess I just spent too much time shaking my head, wondering what in the world Adam was thinking, to give the book a higher rating.