A review by waden34
Isaac Asimov's Caliban by Roger MacBride Allen
3.0
This was a much better book than most of the other garbage published in Asimov's name.
The story started off like a good mystery with a robot apparently having hurt a human. After the initial rush though, the story takes on a different personality and not much happens in the way of plot development until about 2/3 in. At that point, things get interesting again and it leads to an unexpected but not altogether fascinating ending.
One major downfall to this book for me was once again character names. The robots are all named after Shakespeare characters: Caliban, Ariel, Donald, Horatio. These are normal and acceptable names. The humans, however, are a different story. We get Alvar, Fredda, Chanto, Simcor, Gubber, & Jomaine. Having completely unnatural names takes me out of the experience of reading the story every time I see the name. I just don't see how such creative people can completely drop the ball here.
The story started off like a good mystery with a robot apparently having hurt a human. After the initial rush though, the story takes on a different personality and not much happens in the way of plot development until about 2/3 in. At that point, things get interesting again and it leads to an unexpected but not altogether fascinating ending.
One major downfall to this book for me was once again character names. The robots are all named after Shakespeare characters: Caliban, Ariel, Donald, Horatio. These are normal and acceptable names. The humans, however, are a different story. We get Alvar, Fredda, Chanto, Simcor, Gubber, & Jomaine. Having completely unnatural names takes me out of the experience of reading the story every time I see the name. I just don't see how such creative people can completely drop the ball here.