Inga

For as much as I detest Undine Spragg (and I really do, she's a terrible woman) I enjoyed this novel. I cannot, however, see me reading it again for pleasure.

This was one of the set books for my OU module Telling Stories: the novel and beyond. I LOVED this! It pains me to admit that this was my first Gaiman story and he does not disappoint! Charles Vess is a phenomenal illustrator and I loved the way that both modes intertwined to tell this story.

This was my first Le Guin and, having just finished it, I am still processing it. It is scifi of its era, very philosophical, exploring ideas about humanity and human thinking more than adventures in space which is how we think about scifi in the ‘modern' age.

This book is about society - a socialist ‘utopia' on the moon and its capitalist ‘sister' on the planet below. It is about anarchy, about how people rely on one another for their survival even if they don't want to.

It is very dry, like all philosophical scifi that I have read, though this was better than Asimov for me - I could not get on with how he wrote - I found Foundation very boring to read.

This, like Dune, is a book that warrants rereading.

URGH. Flat characters, flat writing, flat sex scenes and marital rape!! He was drunk and she took advantage of him! Hope the next ones better.

This is not a book I would have willingly chosen to read, its not really a genre I tend to gravitate towards. But saying that, I enjoyed this book more than I was expecting to. Yes, parts were difficult to read, without getting into too much detail there are some taboo things in this book. But at the heart of it it is a story of love and loss, of grieving for the life you though you were going to have but didn't, how the bitterness that some people hold onto when their lives don't turn out the way they wanted can poison future generations.

Would I recommend this book to others? Yes, but with warnings about the taboo sections.