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A review by genteelblackhole
A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
3.0
This book is composed of three parts, each one originally published as separate short stories. Combined they tell a wider narrative spanning centuries, but each part is an individual story too. Of those constituent parts, the first one was by far my favourite. The humour was at its most charming, with Brother Francis doing his best to piece together a flawed understanding of pre-apocalypse society. That story alone I would rate at least four stars, maybe five. I was having a GREAT time with this book.
Then the second and third parts gradually lost me. I get what they were doing — painting a cyclical view of the development of mankind, from dark age to renaissance to modernity and back to dark age. But the finer points of church politics and international politics were wearying for me to read, the frequent Latin passages interrupted my reading as I consulted a list of translations, and as an atheist I struggled to appreciate some of the commentary on faith and religion. It’s well written but I am clearly the wrong audience for this book. If you love Graham Greene’s overtly Catholic novels and also post-apocalyptic sci-fi though, give it a try I guess.
Then the second and third parts gradually lost me. I get what they were doing — painting a cyclical view of the development of mankind, from dark age to renaissance to modernity and back to dark age. But the finer points of church politics and international politics were wearying for me to read, the frequent Latin passages interrupted my reading as I consulted a list of translations, and as an atheist I struggled to appreciate some of the commentary on faith and religion. It’s well written but I am clearly the wrong audience for this book. If you love Graham Greene’s overtly Catholic novels and also post-apocalyptic sci-fi though, give it a try I guess.