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Comment by thestu | Hacker News Reader

I'm halfway through the book. That opening bit is so great, and the rest has been a big letdown so far. Really feels like that opening was written as a short story and then the rest of the book was just tacked on. Maybe the second half will be better.

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It doesn’t. I appreciate that the author wants to tackle big themes, but there was so much hand-waiving and wishful thinking about how people want to live and choose to live that it really undermined the plausibility of the plot.

I did appreciate some details, like the idea of airships for long distance leisure travel and large swaths of land being returned to wilderness. But overall it didn’t live up to the hype.

Maybe it was just because I was listening to it at 1.5x speed, but it definitely felt like there were just too many ideas jammed together.

Especially the CarbonCoin idea. Possibly a good approach, but it made for some bad storytelling.

Having read a number of KSR books, I admire the creativity, but find some ideas a bit half-baked. The characters and storytelling are generally a bit lacking in depth and development as well.

Consider reading Walkaway by Cory Doctorow if you haven't. Excellent book - I haven't read the one you're talking about but from what you mention I think it deals in similar themes

The book never gets better. It was a painful read for me.

That's disappointing. I had similar issues with The Mars Trilogy. I've yet to finish the last book, and the middle book took a long time to slog through.

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