I'm sure there are SciFi zealots out there that will despise my review of Brinn's novel. That's okay - this is how I explained it to my 10yr old, and the best comparisons I can draw to (hopefully) explain it.
If you liked the books Contact and Aurora, and the action-movie Vantage Point plus nod with shifty eyes whenever there is a conspiracy theory that supports your "hunch", this is a book you will enjoy.
Let me start with the movie comparison (even though the acting was terrible). The thing that I appreciated about Vantage Point was how it used a diverse storyline with several main characters - all of which had a piece of the puzzle. Again, setting aside the bad acting, each piece of the puzzle was told to its entirety until the last 35 minutes of the movie when all the pieces started colliding in ways that gripped hold of you as you root on the good guys catching the bad guys.
Existence is written with much that same flavor, with some post-apocalyptic flare for fun. If this was my first (or early) SciFi book in my early years, I probably would have loved it or hated it. If the latter - then I'd be swearing off SciFi altogether.
Brinn attempted to combine some very intricate, almost sacred SciFi concepts with their counterpart fears or absurdities in order to introduce the art of the possible. Thankfully my palette has been properly developed from better works read previously to shape my likes and dislikes.
As a side note, it's generally a bad plan to sprinkle random references - especially one of the most well-known references - from Hamlet into a SciFi book, and then misuse it. Hell, even I can still quote most of Hamlet's soliloquy and decode what his rambling about perchance to dream means.
The part that I liked the most was about Hacker and the dolphins - that is all I'm going to say aside from that storyline would have made an excellent "art of the possible" book. It also gave me great inspiration as I think on tattoo ideas - perhaps a giant underwater scene. Wonder what would have happened if the sea creatures in question were Octopi not Dolphins that Hacker stumbled across during his crash.
The simplest way to appropriately set your expectations for this book is to compare it to The Great British Bakeoff or Sugar Rush. Imagine the most elaborate, beautiful, detailed, and delicious cake you have ever seen. You are overcome by the buttercream work, colors, life-like detail of whatever figures or flowers or whatever decorate the cake. And you get so excited to take your first bite! Until you actually have to swallow it only to discover yourself lacking milk.
I'll give it 2.5 stars for effort, which rounds up to 3 stars on the Goodreads scale. If you want an easy read that you can pick up and put down in fairly quick bits with no real desire to read straight through, this is your book. If you are more of a SciFi purest who really does believe - optimistically - in the art of the possible good that comes from space and contact with other beings - don't waste your time.
Happy Reading!
--Jennifer
No comments:
Post a Comment