Bios by Robert Charles Wilson
Jun. 12th, 2008 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsZoe, a carefully engineered and physiologically augmented clone, is sent from autocratically-controlled earth to an exploration outpost on a new world. It’s hoped that she will be able to cope with the virulent Isis atmosphere, which eats people alive in under a minute. But Zoe has been tampered with, and no one knows that her mind and emotions might actually be her own now.
I’m reading Wilson’s catalog backwards, pretty much by accident, and it’s kind of shocking really. Sometime in the past twelve books he figured out how to write (see the mostly excellent Spin). It was a few books after this one, apparently.
Because . . . ouch. Good worldbuilding, flat characters, dreadful construction. This book doesn’t so much fall apart at the end as fail utterly to come together in the middle.
The idea was there, though, potentially rich and tragically . . . I was going to say under-executed, but actually I think it’s over-executed. I’m glad to see he’s always had good ideas, and something of a sense of how they ought to come together. Just, uh, it’s a lot better without all the flailing and hopping around on one foot.
I’m reading Wilson’s catalog backwards, pretty much by accident, and it’s kind of shocking really. Sometime in the past twelve books he figured out how to write (see the mostly excellent Spin). It was a few books after this one, apparently.
Because . . . ouch. Good worldbuilding, flat characters, dreadful construction. This book doesn’t so much fall apart at the end as fail utterly to come together in the middle.
The idea was there, though, potentially rich and tragically . . . I was going to say under-executed, but actually I think it’s over-executed. I’m glad to see he’s always had good ideas, and something of a sense of how they ought to come together. Just, uh, it’s a lot better without all the flailing and hopping around on one foot.