A review by interpretagain
Contact by Carl Sagan

4.0

I would have liked to give this book three stars but the ending saved it. The principle behind the story is very good--an alien civilisation sends layered messages inside radio waves. The layers can be understood the smarter or further along you are. A clever metaphor. The matter of fact writing might please some, but I found it only exposed that sagan didn't have the ability with language that would have made the book captivating. At points it was rambling, at others large words were crammed into sentences that became unwieldy. The story overall took too long to develop, and some of the dialogue just seemed like poorly disguised anti religion tirades. The irony of the ending and the meaning each person could take from it forced me to give the book an overall good rating. I don't regret reading it.