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A review by xover
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
2.0
Robinson can write in pure technical terms (the language is good; which is sadly not guaranteed for all hyped books these days), but clearly has no idea how to tell a story. Long sections of "listing stuff I looked up on Wikipedia", random excerpts from scientific articles with very little bearing on the story, any actual action is described—usually at a distance—instead of shown, the plot is meandering, incoherent, and unoriginal, the characters both unrelatable and implausible (what few of them there are).
But its most damning feature is the constant sneaking suspicion that the author is inserting their politics and worldview into the text. I have no idea what Robinson's politics are in real life, but after reading this I feel confident I could make a good guess on any number of topics. And if you're not better able to mask your own politics from the reader you're serving them polemic, not fiction.
After the first quarter or so I turned my audiobook playback speed up to 2x, and for the last half I was hate-reading (well, hate-listening).
But its most damning feature is the constant sneaking suspicion that the author is inserting their politics and worldview into the text. I have no idea what Robinson's politics are in real life, but after reading this I feel confident I could make a good guess on any number of topics. And if you're not better able to mask your own politics from the reader you're serving them polemic, not fiction.
After the first quarter or so I turned my audiobook playback speed up to 2x, and for the last half I was hate-reading (well, hate-listening).