A different style to my usual reading.
I stick to science fiction and fantasy - usually set in alternative or universal or future settings.
This is a sf that is sent in the "normal" Earth world and concentrates on Biology as its plausible science fiction.
Interesting real main character, but I can never get used to how quickly stories wrap up. ( )

239

I was extremely into this book until the last 5 pages or so. It felt like Jurassic Park meets John Varley. There was more than one point when I had to set the book down, stand up, and walk around my apartment for a little bit, just to shake off the emotions I was able to feel in connection with Prabir. I loved the way Prabir came out to the reader by simply growing up and having a partner. I loved the way this story would be unrecognizably different with a straight protagonist--it's an indelibly queer story, and I like that. Then Madhusree talked to a test tube and it understood her, and I was just left wondering if Egan should have shut the manuscript in a desk drawer for a few years before trying to finish it. ( )

Not his best work. I liked the shift from astrophysics and technophilia to biology, but even though the main evolutionary puzzle/MacGuffin in the book was fairly interesting, a good cross between quantum computing and evolution, I thought Prabir was one of the weakest protagonists Egan has ever written, and the emotional logic behind his decisions was as incoherent as it was annoying. Prabir was especially irritating in the beginning of the book, when he was an unconvincing wunderkind; it was the least believable child character I've read since I suffered through a Don DeLillo novel. It really seemed like Egan got it into his head that he would write an Indian main character just because he could, because though his heritage plays a very minor role in the story, it's fairly incidental and ultimately doesn't add much. Also, maybe I only noticed this because I had read Luminous so recently, but Prabir's attitude towards his homosexuality ("aggressive ambivalence", if that makes sense) is almost exactly the same as the attitude of the protagonist in the short story Cocoon. My final complaint: the post-modern parody sections might have seemed funny when they were being written, but they provoke barely a chuckle at this point. I think this book could have been stronger if Egan had tossed a few more ideas in (the genetic changes described could have been much more dramatic and cooler; speaking of Luminous again, the setting of the Chaff short story would have been a much better choice) and if he had made the main character less of a tool. Time for a break from Egan, sadly. ( )

I love Greg Egan's novels, and hard sci-fi, but just didn't like this book. It started out painfully slow, and while there was eventually some interesting content toward the end, I just didn't enjoy it or get much out of it. I'd still probably have read it for completion purposes (as I'd eventually like to have read all of Egan's work), but this is not one to prioritize. (Lots of internal dialogue with a character I didn't really like; lots of details about really boring things; the interesting science part could have been described in about 3 pages, and deserved a lot more.) The ending was rushed, but whatever. Maybe the main character was "realistic" as a fairly normal or plausible person (very intelligent, but lots of self doubt and generally pathetic), but not someone I particularly empathize with.

One of the more interesting parts of the book was the takedown of postmodern/transgressive/etc. dialogue in the social sciences. This might seem be a bit too much like kicking a retarded puppy, but it's more like excising cancer.

(This was the Audible version; the narrator is far better than the narrator of Egan's first books.) ( )