A review by corymojojojo
Neverness by David Zindell

4.0

Neverness is an intricate tale told on a huge scale. With a setting and journey of hardship reminiscent of Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, and the philosophical musings and near-impenetrable world-building of Herbert's Dune, Zindell creates an insanely creative world and a story that is hard to explain. Built on a foundation of high-concept mathematics, this is the story of the search for the secret of the universe and how mankind fits into it all. While the ambition is great, the story dragged on a bit at times (this is a long book), and somehow every single character in this book is incredibly unlikeable. I having a feeling that if I ever reread this book down the line, I would have a much higher opinion of it, because the amount of made-up words to flesh out the world, while memorable, is a chore in the beginning and even by the end I don't think I was fully grasping a lot of it. Then again, there is something special about a book that you don't fully "get" until the second read.