Great on audio, with chapters told from third person and some chapters that were more like a radio drama interview or audio log. I have always loved mysteries, and there were several suspects, clues sprinkled in, and well-constructed plot that kept me guessing until the end. Kinda reminded me of Veronica Mars!

I’m currently reexamining the beliefs I grew up with, so this book was an interesting way to do that. The writing was all over the place, and it seemed the author was trying too hard to connect different ideas, but it has some interesting ideas about God’s character, namely that God does not cause bad things to happen, but allows bad things to happen to us. Like I said, kind of confusing.

It was my first time reading Ted Chiang, and I very much enjoyed reading these short stories, each with its own style: some only a few pages, some over 100 pages, which take classic sci-fi “futuristic” ideas (time travel, robots and androids, virtual worlds vs reality) and yet make them so accessible and real and human. Using these stories as vehicles, Chiang poses questions about what it means to be human, how we communicate with each other, and how we remember. Sometimes, I felt the stories ended a bit abruptly, and the ideas were not always fleshed out, which is why I ultimately gave the collection 4 stars.