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Spoilers, mention of rape, strong opinions

Die ersten zwei Drittel waren das erwartete Geplänkel, aber geistreich war es meist nicht. Das letzte Drittel war dann von einem Groschenroman nicht mehr zu unterscheiden.

Selten ein Buch gelesen, bei dem die Serie sogar wesentlich tiefgründiger, politischer und geistreicher war.

Habe die Serie erwartet, mit mehr Tiefgang, mehr Originaltreue.

Es kommen im wesentlichen nur die beiden Hauptcharaktere vor. Politisch wird es gar nicht, es geht nur um große, starke Männer mit breiten Schultern und muskulösen Beinen, zarte Frauen (bis auf Penelope), die immer besitzt und beschützt werden müssen, Sex als maximale Erfüllung, überhaupt geht es so viel um Erfüllen/Ausfüllen. Ihre angeblich geistreiche und tiefsinnige Art und ihr Drang ihn zu retten aus seiner Wut, übergeht völlig, dass sie ihn vollständig benutzt um Schwanger zu werden, während er betrunken ist (was für einen Aufruhr das gäbe, wäre die Szene andersrum), sehr viel unreflektierte Gewalt, weil Männer halt so stark sind und ungezügelt (boar werden da oft Menschen geschlagen, oder ihnen oder Türen Gewalt angedroht, aber ist ja alles ok, weil aus Liebe).

Keine Erwähnung von anderen Charakteren oder tiefgründige Einführungen und politische oder gesellschaftliche Probleme. Wenn dann nur als indirekte Randbemerkung um die Szene intimer zu machen.

Die langen Briefe von Whistledown aus der Serie sind auch nur kurze Einzeiler.

Ich mag nicht mal den Rest lesen.

Sehr enttäuscht.

The only problem with reading books by Le Guin is, that at one point, you finish the book.

I really enjoyed these short stories. Again. And I'll be coming back to them, they will be different the next time.

Another attempt to read books outside my favourite genre. Just to realise once again that I don't like certain types of books.

I liked the mix of historical facts and settings and the fictional events themselves. But overall it was too lengthy, repetitive and not deep enough/thought out/too obvious in the plot for me. It felt like the same metaphors were always used to describe deep emotional changes, which still somehow came across as shallow. The beginning slow for me and seemed to drag on forever, even though it suited the development of the main character, only to rush to the finale on the last few pages, perhaps an allusion to the river here too? In general, there were too many river metaphors for me (and arrows and oh my).

Unfortunately, I liked the writing style of the epilogue much better than the book itself. What a pity.

(Also: why would you use AI generated images for covers, why? Could someone please fix the wings. And pay people for art work?!)

Sadly, most of the stories weren't that great. Actually I found only one very well and interesting, not even a handful were nice and the rest was rather dull.

Well.

I really wanted to like it. On a superficial level I actually really liked it. Like you love a good Saturday night movie with popcorn and nachos. But that is basically were this ends for me. It is a fun read, it is full of info dumps on a very basic level.

But overall?

I'm so missing depths. This is just another of those novels, were we have a lonesome, white nerd guy, that saves the world, 'cause he has to.

Besides a lot of missing depth on his character, there are minor plot holes, like: why was there no proximity alert, when he first encountered the Blib-A, but also big plot holes (all the earth side of the story, where they are basically destroying the whole planet, to save the planet, what happens with Venus, what happens with both strands once Taumoeba are introduced to our solar system).

So instead of writing a book to demonstrate, how amazing the whole world can be in pulling it together to save the world, this book describes how amazingly everyone can work together to destroy the planet and not save the world from climate change, but to just send a totally immature boy, who can't follow basic principles in biological experiments, a russian (with a very stereotypical alcohol problem) and another scientist (whom we basically know, because he's stern; moreover, they both have no further character, do not let me get into all those stereotypes) into space to save us all. But there is of course no time left for this back story of a destroyed earth, but we just assume, everything will be fine, because the sun is shining again.

So he not only has no social life, because dooo, had one disaster of a girl friend, but is a nerd and therefor oh so lovable. I'm kind of fed up with these stories, that are basically the grown up version of all those teenage books, where the hero saves everyone, but just for the nerd guys out there, as the premise of this story is basically, that he does not even check in after what he has done.