lightreads | Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson

Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Alternate history scifi about a subtle alien organism surrounding the earth and nudging the course of history towards peace for its own ends.

Bafflement. Robert Charles Wilson, what happened to you? How did the guy who wrote Spin phone in something so shallow and pointless? This is a fertile concept – humans confronting the idea that prosperity and peace are artificially imposed from without, and having to decide what to do about it. You could really go places with that. This book utterly fails to. It flails around a bit with some stilted interpersonal nonsense, drops a few obvious twists and sets up more plot holes than most Stargate episodes, and then limps to a vague conclusion type thing. There isn't even enough there here for me to get my teeth in for some real complaining. I can't, because there's not enough substance.

Seriously, his back catalog is kind of shaky, but this was recently published and we know what he can do. What the hell happened to RCW?

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