Rainbow's end (spoilers ok)

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I'm trying once again to make a "spoiler" folder for this book. Last night it wouldn't let me.

[Gabi]

I quit! I'm at 77% and I just can't go on. This is one hot mess! A recital of cool ideas written in the prose of a middle grader with characters where the term 'flat' would be flattering.

[TomK2]

uh oh. I an at 50% and having doubts myself. so far, the only thing I found worthwhile is the concept of identity. Robert sees himself as a world class poet, and nothing else seems to matter. Everyone else who knows him only sees him as a world class jerk. It is sad commentary for those whose careers define them. It is also sad commentary on conceit and selfishness, yet I found a small amount of pity for a man who thought so much of himself for such ephemeral acts.

[Art, Stay home, stay safe.]

Wow, this does not look too promising

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

Sad to hear that the book is so bad. I've read both novels and worker works by Vernor Vinge and most of them were quite good.

[Antti]

I don't remember it as bad; admittedly it's been years since I read it, but I remember it as flawed yet interesting. I seem to have four-starred it, but that's probably a misclick: in my memories it's a three-star book.

But it is much weaker than his space operas: if it wasn't for The Peace War this would probably be my least-favourite Vinge book.

[Gabi]

Yes, I was quite surprised, because I've read the Zones of Thoughts books by him and they were a whole other writing level. I have to give the caveat that I was reading the German translation of Rainbow's End, but usually German translations are quite good - and if the messy prose should be the fault of the translator, this one had to be the world's worst of his profession.

[TomK2]

I am trying to put my finger on what is causing me to dislike this book. I guess I was originally interested in the international intrigue in a high tech and hyper-connected world. But all I am getting is a self centered, unlikable protagonist in a society that is almost compltetely gone virtual. So much that virtual skills are taught and deemed more essential than the education of our times. Yet even so, this lacks the biting commentary, warnings, sarcasm, and irony that would make it more interesting (thinking of things like Black Mirror episodes and Ready Player One, for example). It isn't very suspenseful or intriguing, I find myself having difficulty consuming more than 2 chapters at a time. At my current rate, also partly due to work and the elections, I probably will not finish this before my 2 week borrow expires in 2 days. If that happens, my opinion today is to DNF rather than renew.

[Antti]

TomK2 wrote: "But all I am getting is a self centered, unlikable protagonist"

I also didliked Gu at the beginning, but he grew on me - and then he grew and had an actual character arc, which I always like.

"Yet even so, this lacks the biting commentary, warnings, sarcasm, and irony that would make it more interesting "

I thought it was refreshing take: the future world is described as very different from ours. It's weird and in some ways repugnant to us, but it's not portrayed as a dystopia. It's just different, the values have drifted, but it's not horrible or anything.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I'm at about 25% and I'm bored and not liking it much.
So I went to read The Ministry Of The Future, and it is depressing and also boring.

[J.W.]

The book starts with an absolute bang. I loved the idea that some random increase in sales on some random treat prompted a greater worry. As the book went on, though, I realized I wasn't really reading a book about that fascinating introduction. I was reading some other, much less exciting story about some rather annoying poet.

I'm disappointed, because I didn't remember it very well since the last time I read it (I've read many, many books since) and felt I was coming at it fairly fresh. Now I realize the reason I didn't remember it was because it is largely unmemorable. Ironically, I did have a strong memory of the prologue, which basically remains my favorite part of the book. I oscillated quite a bit on this one, early on thinking it was a 5-star (prologue/first couple chapters), then progressively dropping. I almost dipped to 2 stars but decided on 3. It's okay, but disappointing.

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

My review is here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

J.W. wrote: "largely unmemorable"

Agree, and I'm only about 35% in.

Oleksandr wrote: "My review is here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

You know you didn't give it stars, right? And so agree with your comment "There are a lot of characters, but almost no one of them make you want to like them" Yep.

Not sure if I will finish even though I have read a few pages today.

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

Kateblue wrote: "You know you didn't give it stars, right? "

Thanks, missed that. it is another 5 stars ideas 2 star (or 1) execution.

[Caitlin]

gotta say i wasnt a fan of this one. way too much time on complicated technical stuff that made what couldve been a great story kind of boring. i still feel like i missed quite a few things even at the end.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Still in the same place and might try a little bit more today. Or maybe not

[Allan]

Finished it today. I was torn between 3 and 4 stars, but ultimately gave it 3. It had some interesting ideas about technology and its potential misuse, but the execution of the story itself was lacking. As I said in my first post about it, none of the characters was particularly likeable or someone who could really pull you through the story. The culminating battle was a hot mess; you couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't and needed a scorecard to keep track of the players. It reminded me of Ready Player One but without the definitive resolution. The wrap-up was just ok but better than the battle. It didn't have near the cohesiveness of the Zones of Thought books. But it did read fairly easily, despite that lack.

[Kalin]

So, I dragged my way through this. I just couldn't bring myself to DNF, since it is on the Hugo winners list. It was easily the worst book I've read all year. Pacing, plot, characterization, prose, worldbuilding, every single aspect of it was a disaster of creating writing. No likeable characters, no interesting conspiracy, half the time I had no idea what technology Vinge was even trying to introduce. Like Allan said, the culminating battle was a hot mess.

I have no idea how this won a Hugo (and a Locus). Was it really just for the highly detailed speculation on use of augmented reality?

At any rate, I would rank this so far in the bottom 3 books of all winners I've read to date. Competing down there with Ringworld, Redshirts, and The Fountains of Paradise (unfortunate to have two awful winners in one month).

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I am thinking that maybe I will finish it sometime, but it's not going to be now. I think I want to at least see what happens. But "The culminating battle was a hot mess; you couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't and needed a scorecard to keep track of the players."--well, I have trouble with books where others don't need a scorecard, so this one might be really bad for me.

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

Kalin wrote: "At any rate, I would rank this so far in the bottom 3 books of all winners I've read to date. Competing down there with Ringworld, Redshirts, and The Fountains of Paradise (unfortunate to have two awful winners in one month)."

It is interesting that all three rival books are from 'a-ok' to 'good' for me. I've read Ringworld about 30 years ago, one of the earliest 60s US SF I read and back then it was 5* for me. Now, more jaded me can laugh at that naivite, but I liked Niven since then. Redshirts was quite nice meta-SF, poking at tropes.

[Kalin]

Purely based on ideas and trop-poking, Redshirts was nice. The prose was incredibly off-putting.

I'd be curious to hear what others consider the bottom 3 out of the reads we've done together since this group opened.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Hm. I have to go look at the bookshelves. Good question, Kalin!

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

OK, my three least favorite are:

Nova Express (The Nova Trilogy, #3)
Darwin's Radio (Darwin's Radio #1)
Cloud Atlas

But I had a 4th (I had trouble deciding the top three)

Synners

Also, there was one that I don't think is on the "read" list--but I'm sure we read it--that I disliked intensely. It was in an alien world where there were bugs doing everything and a woman wrote it, woman protagonist, too much description of the world and not enough plot. What was that one?