Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson (2.5)
This book started with an interesting and somewhat timely
premise: humans are changing the earth at a drastic rate and need to find
alternatives to survive long term. The book starts with a very large space ship
(i.e. ark) that is bound for the Tau Ceti system in order to find a new home.
The description of the ship, the complications of centuries long travel (as you
can imagine, the grandchildren of the original ‘settlers’ are the ones who
arrive in Tau Ceti) and the initial investigation of the planets and moons in
the new system were interesting – but that all happens in the first ½ of the
book. The second half is where most of my complaints lie. The personal
narrative changes and the timeline speeds up. I understand why this needs to
happen, but it caused me to lose interest quickly. I also felt the level of
technical discussion overwhelmed the story. In the end, I appreciated the
overall technical conclusions about the complexities of biology and the
difficulties of finding an appropriate planet, but felt the book took far to
long to get to those conclusions. There was a good story to be told, but it was
told in a long, drawn-out manner with too few compelling characters.
I feel this book deserves a better review from this blog owner. They have previously reviewed a book with a similar premise (Seveneves) with nearly the same comments... long winded technical description, interesting premise, time line speeds up significantly in the second part of the book and yet they gave that book a 4 and this one a 2.5. I see little difference between the two books and the character development and I would rate them both as 3's.
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