jakej's Reviews (94)

More sprawling and epic in scope than Heinlein's other famous social commentaries like Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

It loses a bit of steam near the end but man, especially for the first half, Heinlein's storytelling skill is out in full force - few create a page-turner like he does.

The hippie commentary is generally what I expected, but it all comes off as sort of toothless when

the magic/abilities of Mike are mixed in. For example, he can't really comment on how this new system of sexual freedom screws over older women (like it would in real life) because the older women like Patty literally de-age themselves. Same thing with Mike's infinite money.

It's interesting how Heinlein himself says in the end that

this isn't a sustainable way to actually set up a society, that what we see with the Inner Circle is the tiniest sliver of people

As with all short fiction collections, some stories were better than others. In the beginning I was starting to bore of stories where the main character has an obsession or fear that grows and grows until it takes them over, but Bradbury moves away from these kind of stories in the second half of the collection.

Overall the stories were pleasantly open-ended, and often ended with only a hint of how things wrap up. Some didn't even intend to scare at all. My favorites were "The Dwarf", "The Lake", "The Emissary", "The Scythe", "The Wind", and "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone".

More naturalistic than I suspected - much of the book is the protagonist moving about the island, reflecting on his past and present place in the world. 

He often overreaches on specific points of rhetoric and language (e.g 'men are the new "niggers"') but most of his points are fairly moderate, banal, and reasonable (the fact that men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate of women, and have a life expectancy 6 years less than women is an issue worthy of addressing).

Several interesting ideas, but Gaiman has bit off more than he can chew. American Gods is structurally sloppy, and

the ending is a drag, everything just peters out. There's no final battle, and both of Shadow's pre-ordained deaths (on the tree and by Czernobog's hand) just magically don't happen.

Few talk about how hilarious this book is. A titanic achievement, encompassing just about every style of writing there is. "The Symphony" and "The Whiteness of the whale" are some of the best pieces of prose I have ever read.

Perfect except for The Moral Virologist and the one where

the couple has a genetically engineered super-intelligent baby