Keely's review
The Speed of Dark
by Elizabeth Moon
Keely's review
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
Keely's review
rating:
bookshelves:
contemporary-fiction,
novel,
sci-fi
Barely Sci-Fi. I understand that the book was pretty interesting, not terribly written, and fits very nicely into the modern P.C. zeitgeist, but it saddens me that both the Nebula and Clarke fell into the trap of picking the easy choice. Sci-Fi should never be about the easy choice.
It really feels like she stamped on the Sci-Fi elements in order to draw the specific audience. I hope that isn't true, because this just feels like a modern, pop-fiction, 'emotionally confessional' book with a veneer of 'vaguely future'.
A real Sci-Fi author wouldn't have squandered the possibility here. For a real Sci-Fi author, the question of what makes us human, what makes our minds work, and what the ethics of altering that are would have taken center stage. That would have been the book, but this book actually cuts almost all of that out, and then ends before any speculation.
It's very unsatisfying to witness the final character change, because it comes off as rushed and inauthentic. Compar...more
It really feels like she stamped on the Sci-Fi elements in order to draw the specific audience. I hope that isn't true, because this just feels like a modern, pop-fiction, 'emotionally confessional' book with a veneer of 'vaguely future'.
A real Sci-Fi author wouldn't have squandered the possibility here. For a real Sci-Fi author, the question of what makes us human, what makes our minds work, and what the ethics of altering that are would have taken center stage. That would have been the book, but this book actually cuts almost all of that out, and then ends before any speculation.
It's very unsatisfying to witness the final character change, because it comes off as rushed and inauthentic. Compar...more
