Childhood's End

It was an ok story. I enjoyed it for the most part, but in the end it just ended up being depressing. Most of the reviews and descriptions of this book talk about humans moving on to their next stage of evolution, but I think that is an inaccurate characterization of the end. Man isn't evolving naturally, it is being re-forged into a tool by the Overmind, and what was left behind was left to go extinct. This didn't seem to me to be any more the natural course of events for Humans any more than it is for the gardener to trim a shrub into the shape of a dolphin.I also got very tired, by the end of the book, of all these characters repeating, that if it wasn't for the Overlords that we would have blown ourselves up with nukes long ago. It just disturbed me how it portrayed the virtually whole of humanity drinking the Kool-Aid of the Overlords within less than a generation.Part of my negative attitude for this may stem from the audio book introduction about how this is one of Clarke's greatest stories and shows how Humans get past being on the brink of self-destruction on earth and move on to a new beginning.