Siah

A beautifully careful writing style that drew me in and reminded me of Andre Aciman's style in Call Me By Your Name. The story itself is a close character study of sorts, spanning over the course of years with our protagonist and love interest. A definite recommend for those looking to read historical fiction.

The style and structure of the novel, the setting, and characterization of Elio and Oliver are the novel's strengths. There weren't many dull moments that I could highlight. Armie Hammer does an exceptional job narrating the audiobook as well. I hung on his every word as he grasped the emotion that Aciman conveyed through his words. Thoroughly enjoyed this one.

The strengths in Childhood's End come from its three part structure, which offers glimpses of humanity at different stages of its first contact story, as well as the overall philosophical, religious, and scientific questions that Clarke presents through his human, and alien, protagonists.

The first part of three is structurally the best, following the expected first contact plot threads while adding an air of mystery and intrigue. Although it's the shortest, it offers a genuine look into what the story is aiming to explore: what if aliens came to Earth, not to conquer it, but to usher it into an era of peace?

The next two parts do not hold up as well, however. Despite its rather dated approaches to race, especially around black Americans , including a brief section about how the n-word is just a commonplace word, much like "republican or methodist, conservative or liberal," and has lot all its taboo-ness in polite society, that offer nothing for the story other than an awkward commentary, the narrative suffers from pacing issues, leaving much less interesting characters to follow for the remainder of the story. By the time one part of the story gets interesting, it falls off in favor of moving on to a different perspective.

The ending, while interesting in concept, feels heavy-handed with large chunks of info-dumping that could have been formatted differently through normal exposition or dialogue. The ending leaves the story on a rather somber note, and while I wasn't expecting a happy ending from a story that seemed to be on a downward spiral since its second part, I do wish there was a finality to it.

Of course, it's easy to pick at a classic through a modern lens and a back catalogue of current sci-fi works that have propelled the genre in a streamlined manner. Childhood's End is a classic for a reason. Despite its shortcomings for me, the thought process that went into crafting such a narrative is still admirable, and you can feel its lasting impact in tons of sci-fi stories today.

Rating: 3.5/5

There's a grand scope to the story, one that feels cinematic and intricate in a lot of ways. On the other hand, the characterization could be more fleshed out and, for certain readers, the book leaning into dense scientific topics and jargon can be off-putting. This fits right at home in the hard sci-fi subcategory.

Three Body Problem does read like a prologue to a larger story, and in a way, that probably does more harm than good. But for what it lacks in characterization and breathing room, the book offers the opportunity to explore the first contact trope in a way that is intriguing and clever, to say the least. For those who are used to the “you have to read the next one to get the full story” angle in book reviews, this is such a book. YMMV.

All that being said, I'm curious to see how the Netflix adaptation will turn out. Like I said, this book feels cinematic, and may offer readers a fuller picture of what Liu set out to do here.

I gave it three stars because it's the last book in the trilogy and it was somewhat enjoyable. But in the end, I couldn't get through the lack of actual conflict, the writing, and just the blandness of it all. I ended up reading the book's entire summary and still have no desire to finish the rest of it any time soon.