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A review by furicle
Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer
3.0
This book is a real mixed bag of pretty good and pretty weak.
The concept is pretty good. It uses parallel worlds and Neanderthals as a great tool to compare and contrast with all of us.
That's something good sci-fi should do, and it's hard to come up with that 'almost human' alien in a believable way. Using a genetic kissing cousin makes sense. It's not original - cue Brin's dolphins and chimps as just one more recent example - but it works.
The human characters in the story are, well, a little too good to be true, even or especially while they honestly point out how lousy everyone else can be.
The Neanderthals are even nicer, and their bad guys would be the good guys in your average modern comic book.
It's a quiet story with the action all in the dialog, once you're past the first couple of chapters. That's a nice change of pace from the summer CGI blockbuster sci fi we see so much of lately, but it's all just too nice to ring true.
Those first two chapters reflect my mixed feelings about the whole book quite neatly. One chapter is a wonderful pastoral world building exercise that I really enjoyed. The next is a depiction of a horrible crime that in the end seems unnecessary and unrealistic.
Hominids is considerably less dense than the other novels by this authour I've read, probably too much so. It's worth reading, but not his best work.
The concept is pretty good. It uses parallel worlds and Neanderthals as a great tool to compare and contrast with all of us.
That's something good sci-fi should do, and it's hard to come up with that 'almost human' alien in a believable way. Using a genetic kissing cousin makes sense. It's not original - cue Brin's dolphins and chimps as just one more recent example - but it works.
The human characters in the story are, well, a little too good to be true, even or especially while they honestly point out how lousy everyone else can be.
The Neanderthals are even nicer, and their bad guys would be the good guys in your average modern comic book.
It's a quiet story with the action all in the dialog, once you're past the first couple of chapters. That's a nice change of pace from the summer CGI blockbuster sci fi we see so much of lately, but it's all just too nice to ring true.
Those first two chapters reflect my mixed feelings about the whole book quite neatly. One chapter is a wonderful pastoral world building exercise that I really enjoyed. The next is a depiction of a horrible crime that in the end seems unnecessary and unrealistic.
Hominids is considerably less dense than the other novels by this authour I've read, probably too much so. It's worth reading, but not his best work.