Reading Adventures Book Club discussion
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I think as of right now, this book is getting a solid 4 stars from me!
I finished the book yesterday and gave it 5 stars. I thought it was amazing! Here's the review I posted on Goodreads.
This was one of the most confusing, descriptive, fantastically written, imaginative, slow to read, and deep books I have ever read.
Confusing - There is so much thrown at you at once. There is usually a learning curve when you read a fantasy or sic-fi book. You usually need some time to digest the world, how it works, what it looks like, how the characters function in it. The learning curve in this book is so steep that by the end of it I still hadn't come close to getting a good grasp on what I had read. But....I loved that about this book. It's a book that you could probably read 10 times and still get something new from it.
Descriptive -I don't think I've ever read such a technically descriptive sci-fi book in my life. In some ways it was difficult to read because a lot of the terminology and descriptions were foreign to me and hard to picture in my head. But for a lot of the book, the descriptions help paint such a vivid picture of this world in a way most other books don't even come close.
Fantastically written - I still can't quite grasp how Dan Simmons was able to write a book with such well developed characters, such gorgeous prose in many sections and the depth that he explores so many important themes such as colonialism, the morality of artificial intelligence, advancement vs, preservation, the definition of humanity and probably a dozen or so more.
Imaginative - There were some incredibly creative stories in this book! My favorite three were the Priest's Tale, the Scholar's Tale, and the Detective's Tale. Each story was completely different from the others, with each story having a distinctive tone and voice. There were so many awesome world building details that I had never seen before.
Slow to Read - I'm not someone who can skim read. If I'm reading something and stumble upon a section that I can't visualize as well or understand, I need to slow down my reading, think about the section for awhile, and not go on in my reading until I can picture the section better or understand it. It was hard to do that in this book because no matter how much I tried to understand some sections, it just wasn't going to happen! I had to push myself to just keep reading and not care if it wasn't all sinking in at first. The more I just kept reading this way, it was easier to understand and connect with the book gradually as I kept reading. But it did take me more than a week to finish reading the book (I was also very busy that week too) because I needed more time to take it in.
Deep - I found most of the themes in this book fascinating. I still find myself thinking about some of the stories and characters. It's rare for me to find a story that is just as entertaining as it is intellectual.
Please do not spoil the book, lets talk about how we are feeling about the story, what we are liking about it and what our ratings will be!