Joshua Ji
really interesting premise but the ending kind of fizzled out and felt very unsatisfactory. Still, I think this is a type of book that will stick with me for a long time.
Contains spoilers
After the Sparrow crushed my heart and soul I knew I had to read the sequel as soon as possible - and I'm glad I did!
Children of God takes a deeper dive into the society of the Runa and Jana'ata in Rakhat, and I LOVED it. It makes the alien societies feel so much more real, and shows a very different and surprising perspective to what happened to Sandoz on Rakhat.
As for Sandoz... he still takes a beating in this book (quite literally), but overall, his journey of recovery is hopeful and I think this book wrapped up The Sparrow quite nicely.
I feel like this is a book I'll have to re-read again when I'm older to fully appreciate the message. Still, this is one of the best books I've read so far.
The book started off a bit slow but the ending was amazing! I also understand what others meant when they said they could see the grander history of the Foundation play out in the background of the shorter stories; this was something I didn't really see in the first book, but the longer stories worked well for me here.
Wow, what an interesting read! Peter Watts packs so many themes and ideas in this book; it was hard to follow at times but I’d recommend this to anyone who like hard sci-fi.
Coming from the Three Body Problem, I really enjoyed the very dramatic, ultra-cosmic-scale concepts he explores. Only gripe I have with this is the awkward conversations, especially in the beginning of the book, which took away a lot of the immersion. Still a fun read!
As a complete novice in linguistics, this book was a super fun read. Guy Deutscher guides us through the marvels of language, but I didn't feel overwhelmed at the information provided.
I didn't expect myself to enjoy this book so much! It was fascinating exploring Tolkien's enormous world building, and the only thing that made it tougher to read near the end was the difficulty keeping track of the characters.
I felt myself invested in the shorter stories, and really liked seeing the greater arcs of the Silmarils and Rings play out in the background. I know most people consider this like an encyclopedia, but I thought it read much easier than that. Maybe i just like reading lore and worldbuilding...
Really enjoyed how Tegmark explored the possible futures for humanity and AI. The sections on consciousness and goals were also interesting, and I feel like he gave a pretty good overview of the many differing opinions that researchers have on these topics.
It was kind of odd reading his description of Elon Musk ("Tall, handsome, eloquent and incredibly knowledgeable" - lol) but I guess you have to be nice to the person that donated 10 million to your foundation...
An interesting storyline and interesting characters, but the writing felt consistently flat and I struggled to get through much of the book.
Cixin Liu's imagination is on full display in the last book of this series; this book was a blast to read!
Really enjoyed the worldbuilding here, and how real the personal stories Robinson takes us throughout the centuries were. Also liked how the style of writing would change as the stories reflected different cultures and time periods. A bit of a slow read at times but overall a really good book.
