Hubbard
This book continues the story of Moscap and Dex meandering through the world in a very similar vein to the last one: gentle descriptions of one person's vision of a semi-utopian world focused on permanent sustainability and harmony with nature interspersed with mildly philosophical dialogues. There are some interesting ideas for how humans might come to live peacefully in perpetual stability with eachother and the world around them, but none are explored satisfactorily in depth, giving the impression on the whole of a relatively superficial and not entirely consistent vision - or am I missing the point? It's hard to tell whether details like the half-thought-out new economic system are serious or fun asides, or if the reader's actually supposed to pay attention to them given how naive the design is. At times I found myself wondering about what sort of audience this book is intended for.
That's the main issue with this mini-series: it straddles the line between young adult and full adult book, at times veering back and forth between these two. The characters are sometimes childish and polite to a fault, excessively sensitive and gentle in a way unrelatable to anyone over the age of 8, yet sometimes cuss out in frustration at odd moments; interactions between characters are sometimes banal and nauseatingly congenial, yet sometimes there's casual sex and polyamory. Given the utopian setting, there's essentially zero conflict of any sort throughout the story, which allows the plot to focus entirely on internal struggles or philosophical discussions like body vs mind, the origins of consciousness, similarities and differences between conscious creatures, the degree to which one should be accepting of death's inevitability, etc. - yet none of these are given the thorough treatment they deserve, and so leave the book feeling a little lacking of actual substance.
All in all, this kind of story could be quite interesting, but was too short and too superficial to make much impact. It would benefit from a more rigorous world building mindset and longer passages in many cases, as opposed to bringing up interesting points only to brush them aside moments later.
This book continues the story of Moscap and Dex meandering through the world in a very similar vein to the last one: gentle descriptions of one person's vision of a semi-utopian world focused on permanent sustainability and harmony with nature interspersed with mildly philosophical dialogues. There are some interesting ideas for how humans might come to live peacefully in perpetual stability with eachother and the world around them, but none are explored satisfactorily in depth, giving the impression on the whole of a relatively superficial and not entirely consistent vision - or am I missing the point? It's hard to tell whether details like the half-thought-out new economic system are serious or fun asides, or if the reader's actually supposed to pay attention to them given how naive the design is. At times I found myself wondering about what sort of audience this book is intended for.
That's the main issue with this mini-series: it straddles the line between young adult and full adult book, at times veering back and forth between these two. The characters are sometimes childish and polite to a fault, excessively sensitive and gentle in a way unrelatable to anyone over the age of 8, yet sometimes cuss out in frustration at odd moments; interactions between characters are sometimes banal and nauseatingly congenial, yet sometimes there's casual sex and polyamory. Given the utopian setting, there's essentially zero conflict of any sort throughout the story, which allows the plot to focus entirely on internal struggles or philosophical discussions like body vs mind, the origins of consciousness, similarities and differences between conscious creatures, the degree to which one should be accepting of death's inevitability, etc. - yet none of these are given the thorough treatment they deserve, and so leave the book feeling a little lacking of actual substance.
All in all, this kind of story could be quite interesting, but was too short and too superficial to make much impact. It would benefit from a more rigorous world building mindset and longer passages in many cases, as opposed to bringing up interesting points only to brush them aside moments later.