jersy's review
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This book is based on a fascinating idea: exploring an abandoned city on a strange planet. Taking only the pure plot into account, it is quite successfully executed. The town is mysterious and discovering it bit by bit made for a fun experience. I also enjoyed the writing style and the 60s language the characters use (at least in the German original) creates a slight retro feeling.
However, I couldn’t stand the protagonists. Considering this premise, I expected scientists, explorers - just professional adults, instead they seemed like little children, teenagers at most, in the way they interacted. They complained all the time, had no real motivation expect competition, made stupid choices and treated each other terribly. There is more context revealed for this later on, but that didn’t change that I didn’t like reading about these annoying people.
The science fiction aspects in this book worked well for me and with different main characters this would probably have delivered what I want from classic SF. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fully enjoy the novel as it is.
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