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A review by nwhyte
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
challenging
slow-paced
4.0
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I had read a lot of very disappointed commentary, and was prepared for masses of dry infodump, but in fact I thought it was quite a good, if old-fashioned, example of the "My God! What if..." aspirations of sf. Despite the almost 900-page length I kept turning the pages. There are some serious problems: the reason why the Moon explodes at the start of the book is never explained, the celebrity cameos are just a bit annoying, the Evil Woman President is much more annoying than that, and the last section of the book, which is set literally 5000 years after the rest, should really have been a separate novel and could actually have been expanded a bit more. Nevertheless, I warmed to it enough to give it my second preference.
I had read a lot of very disappointed commentary, and was prepared for masses of dry infodump, but in fact I thought it was quite a good, if old-fashioned, example of the "My God! What if..." aspirations of sf. Despite the almost 900-page length I kept turning the pages. There are some serious problems: the reason why the Moon explodes at the start of the book is never explained, the celebrity cameos are just a bit annoying, the Evil Woman President is much more annoying than that, and the last section of the book, which is set literally 5000 years after the rest, should really have been a separate novel and could actually have been expanded a bit more. Nevertheless, I warmed to it enough to give it my second preference.