A review by alliwag
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

2.5

This has some interesting ideas at the outset, but the execution is lifeless and I had to push myself hard to finish it. The mystery of the city of Diaspar and Alvin's attempts to escape it are the most engaging parts. I had fun with the advanced technologies and appreciated that there was just enough description of these without going too far in depth. The meandering second half

when Alvin does finally make his way out

takes a steep nosedive in quality, however. There's not enough conflict for a real adventure story and the character work isn't strong enough for a character study. Drudging prose and monotonous descriptions drag the whole thing down. 

The book pushes the virtue of Alvin's curiosity above all else and blames religion and mythmaking for being the coping mechanisms keeping "Man" (lots of that here, this was the 1950s I suppose) from making "progress." I find this ethos to be fundamentally at odds with how I perceive the world to be. I don't participate in organized religion, but I recognize that to make myths - to tell stories - is a core part of being human. This book felt inhuman in its insistence that we as a species are hobbled by storytelling - this, coming from a storyteller! It doesn't make any sense.

Also dying at the end when

Alvin returns and is like "actually what I really want is to be a father and all the women in Diaspar are not whole women because they cannot be mothers" or something like that. Yes, ok, be a father, that's fine, but people who can't or choose not to have children are not broken.