The Joy of Erudition’s Reviews > The Hammer Of God > Status Update

What the hell was that ending? All that buildup for a rushed summary like that?

Now, near the end, we're finally leaving all the meandering exposition and getting back to the whole asteroid business that we left back in Chapter 5.

"Already it was difficult to remember life before Kali." How can it be difficult, when you've just spent 30 chapters rambling on and on about life before Kali?

Clarke uses every trick he can think of here to avoid dialogue and to disguise an essay as a novel. People make speeches, a class attends a lecture, a pope writes an encyclical, a captain gives a briefing, a girl views a display at Disneyland. When there is "dialogue" it's usually just a monologue. He also makes the mistake of describing some older novels about Mars, which sound so much more interesting than this.

This is ridiculous. Still nothing but exposition and infodumps for the past 8 chapters, and no sign of a return of any characters, dialogue, or plot!

Chapter after chapter of nothing but infodumps!

As in his other writing, the only female character gets, at best, one scene with dialogue, and then she's barely mentioned at all for the rest of her short existence.