Book Review: Everyone In Silico
Aug. 25th, 2008 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennythereader(My first book review in over a year! I'm trying to get back into the habit.)
Everyone In Silico
by Jim Munroe
Copyright 2002
ISBN: 0-9686363-1-4
I'm not going to bother with a summary of this novel, as the editorial reviews over Amazon cover that fairly well.
The possible future that Munroe created for this novel is intriguing, but his writing skills don't seem to live up to his ambition. The beginning of the story was weak, and the "climax" was anything but climactic. Of the three major point of view characters there was only one that the author made it clear why we saw her point of view instead of some other random person's. The fourth major point of view character isn't introduced until very late in the book, when he probably should have been seen from the start. The story might even have been stronger if the whole thing was from the POV of this late introduction. Also, I would have preferred more of an explanation as to how the world got into the state it's in. There have been a lot of big changes to society for a story set a mere 20-odd years in the future.
Overall, I think that this book would have worked better as a collection of linked short stories than it does as a novel. The assorted threads of story never quite settle into one solid braid of a plot.
Rating: 5 out of 10.
Everyone In Silico
by Jim Munroe
Copyright 2002
ISBN: 0-9686363-1-4
I'm not going to bother with a summary of this novel, as the editorial reviews over Amazon cover that fairly well.
The possible future that Munroe created for this novel is intriguing, but his writing skills don't seem to live up to his ambition. The beginning of the story was weak, and the "climax" was anything but climactic. Of the three major point of view characters there was only one that the author made it clear why we saw her point of view instead of some other random person's. The fourth major point of view character isn't introduced until very late in the book, when he probably should have been seen from the start. The story might even have been stronger if the whole thing was from the POV of this late introduction. Also, I would have preferred more of an explanation as to how the world got into the state it's in. There have been a lot of big changes to society for a story set a mere 20-odd years in the future.
Overall, I think that this book would have worked better as a collection of linked short stories than it does as a novel. The assorted threads of story never quite settle into one solid braid of a plot.
Rating: 5 out of 10.
