Joel's Reviews > Seveneves

interesting -- I also rated 3 stars, but for what sounds like almost exactly the opposite reasons! :-)

This sentence gave me hope that Doc Dubois and "Doob" might in fact been developing into actual distinct personalities:

All through their romantic dinner on the terrace he made a concerted effort not to look at the remains of the moon.

Oh, well.

Exactly my impressions! I've read most NS' books, and I always appreciated his dry humour. Sadly, no trace of it in this one, and it's, indeed, tell tell tell tell. For a creator of such engaging female characters like YT and Zola, the women in 7-eves are oddly sketchy and rather hard to like. Actually,men as well :-(

My sentiments exactly. Science - yes. Story - not so much.

There's not a huge amount of humor, but some one liners are hiding in the weeds. Like the group that ran out of anesthesia, and so must have gotten really good "at acupuncture and biting down on things." :)

One of the few reviews which nails the same impressions as mine, with a much lesser word count - only two stars for me, though.

I had the "show don't tell" thought as well. That's the rule, and it should only be broken by someone who can wield the words. And S delivers, so I'm OK with his rule breaking.

Totally agree with 100% of this. There were some points where I thought it was doing to veer into greatness, but it always fell right back into various histories and irrelevancies.

I agree with this criticism. He should have stayed within the story - stepping out to explain stuff is cheating. But it didn't spoil it for me.

My thoughts exactly. Closer to the end of the book I even started to skip elaborated description of one or another vehicle or machine, or habitat. I simply felt that I'm reading a very elaborated encyclopedia instead of sci-fi book. Especially, given that the story develops extremely slow and without any suspense.

"[10 pages of backstory about different people who have looked at Dinah]" lol,yes. And I now feel qualified to build a cloud ark.

You are indeed correct. I have not yet made it to part two of this book and as you can see I'm doing anything other than actually reading it.

I wanted to love this book, but I couldn't follow the flow of the story because of the overly descriptive sections and back stories. I love back stories but it feels like this authors book is an overly rich chocolate cake that tastes incredible at the first bite but leaves you nauseated as you continue to consume it. The story doesn't measure right and the rhythm is way off. I could not finish the book and I have a thing about finishing books.

Joel, you said it well. it would have been a great 500 page book. The author is obviously a smart guy but the constant diving into detail in mind numbing.

Thanks for confirming my impressions. After a while I just gave up on the book at 46% of the way through. The setup with the ex president character was a slow train wreck that I had no interest in reading. Far too many situations felt contrived, too many little details felt like railroading the story and the pacing is just off. None of the characters felt like real people, but more like high-level characters in a role playing game.

Neil Stevenson knows how to get the science right, but I am giving up on him as a storyteller.

In his defense, his "telling" rather than "showing" was way worse in Anathem... :-)

Oh I was saying "Show don't tell" as I was reading the book too!!

Sevenevescould be viewed as "mythic history" of how humanity survived and was reunited. I thought the book was strangely similar to The Silmarillion.

Also, it seemed ot me that much of the first part of the book is remembered and recounted the way it is in order to explain the latter third of the book.

So, e.g., to me the first part of the book is like a retelling of "The Epic of the Seven Eves"-- the mythic history of human survival. I took all the discussions as being the product of a sort of "laymen's" retelling of that new, worldwide Epic. That earlier mythic substrate then also helps to explain the third part of the book.

The thrid part of the book is the overlay of the "new" myth of Reunion on top of the traditional Epic of Survival. Like how Aragorn's and Arwen's mythic story in the Lord of the Rings was overlain on top of the "myth" of Beren and Luthien's. Or like how the Odyssey and Aeneid both build upon and re-interpret the Iliad.

It was an intriguing mix once I got used to it. Sorry others didn't take to it. It was one of my favorites.

I agree completely with the way info dumps where handled, like inserting them literally in the middle of dialogue, argh!...., but I still loved the book.

I agree - one of the few SF books this year I stopped reading - if I wanted a scientific paper on the ISS I would read a scientific publication - SF is above all a novel, a narrative, it tells a story, it has characters, human emotions, revelations - I struggled along trying to read this book and enjoy it and failed.

This is the review I'm wanting to write, but you beat me to it.

I was curious about this as well, unti I got to part three - then I understood why we were to really understand the 7 eves - to understand their offspring.

Agree about the over descriptiveness of the story. That was why I kind of preferred the end of the book the most, it seemed to have the most focus on the people as opposed to describing their surroundings. Even in books set in nature, I can only take so much description of the trees and the temperature of the air and the texture of the grass and ... well you get the picture. Give the readers enough to get the feel of it, and then focus on the characters and the story. Parts of this read more like a technical manual than a novel. Still really enjoyed it overall and the premise, but it could have been even better.

Just starting this book. Saw the amount of pages...then I read your review and glad to know that I'll be able to skip/skim some backstory areas without it be a problem.

Yeah, the lack of humour and irreverence surprised me too - Stephenson normally uses those to make exposition interesting. I feel like he got told Reamde had too much wacky action and not enough science and technology, so he wrote a "serious" book that was mostly science with very little fun.

I hate to give up on this book but I'm a quarter of the way through and still waiting for the story to start. After reading your review and the comments I don't think this is for me. It feels like a Lego manual. Not science and not fiction.

This is exactly how I felt!

Long drab stretches of boring writing.

I haven't read this book, but I felt this way about another one of his books, Cryptnomicon. Guess it's his style of writing, so I own't bother giving him another shot.

Once I reached the last part I found that I could only remember the personalities of Julia, Aida, Dinah and Ivy. The other 3 never really seemed fleshed out. Dinans are supposed to be heroic leaders. But I never really felt like Dinah fit that description all that much. I did like he ending with the different branches of humanity revealed.

Yes to this review!

I refuse to not finish it but the last part better be better than the first 2 parts. I'm not usually reading sci-fi and this is not endearing me to the genre. Although I won't give up entirely. I think the author was too concerned with the technicalities and not enough with the human aspects. I'm disappointed but still curious to where it's leading.

I agree, very true about the background

LOL the disparity of reviews on this book is ranging from 1-100 and every number in between xD.
I'm getting so much different POVs that i cant tell if it's good or bad. gotta read it myself ig

If the narrative is intriguing enough, an astute reader can get past it with narry a blimp. And the narratives here are almost uniformly interesting. So the critique, while I understand it, is basically anti-SF, which allows much lesser work calling itself "SF" but is really just excessive hand waving, gets published nowadays. I.e. mostly literate writers thinking "hey, how hard could writing SF be, followed by agents / editors agreeing "not that hard, we guess", thus intentionally dumbing down publishers and the reading public even more than public / private / religious / home schools are doing. A sad state of affairs for the genre as a whole. Give me Neal and authors like him all day long!

Thanks for this -- it seems to be a trend in Sci Fi in general that decades of background and pages of exposition are included for every scene. It can be like reading a speculative encyclopedia. Pass.