Deborah Pickett reviewed Existence by David Brin
Overlong and indulgent, a short story in 880 pages
2 stars
Two stars for me means "I pushed through and finished it."
I haven't read any David Brin before, so all I knew was that he existed and that he had a series of books in his Uplift universe, which this wasn't part of.
This feels like a book in two parts: the first three quarters, full of detailed worldbuilding and a great deal of prose that turned out to be irrelevant, and the last quarter, featuring main characters that were only part of the ensemble cast in the first part, and a nemesis which was only mentioned in the barest of ways until then. I estimate that of that first three quarters, two thirds of it could have been safely edited out to make a lean 440-page novel with a coherent message.
Stylistically, Brin is pretty mediocre at writing women, so it's fortunate that there aren't many in this book. …
Two stars for me means "I pushed through and finished it."
I haven't read any David Brin before, so all I knew was that he existed and that he had a series of books in his Uplift universe, which this wasn't part of.
This feels like a book in two parts: the first three quarters, full of detailed worldbuilding and a great deal of prose that turned out to be irrelevant, and the last quarter, featuring main characters that were only part of the ensemble cast in the first part, and a nemesis which was only mentioned in the barest of ways until then. I estimate that of that first three quarters, two thirds of it could have been safely edited out to make a lean 440-page novel with a coherent message.
Stylistically, Brin is pretty mediocre at writing women, so it's fortunate that there aren't many in this book. His writing of autistic characters is similarly stereotyped and awkward.
Based on Existence, I'm not rushing out to read the Uplift series.