I was really excited after the first chapter, which was full of subtle sociopolitical satire and lots of well-executed sideboob. The rest of it, though, felt like pretty typical fiction, and coming from a guy who generally prefers staring into space over reading fiction, that isn’t a compliment.
That’s not to say that I want my 5.6 hours back. It was a fine use of 5.6 hours. It reminded me, for one thing, that there are so many things you can do in writing that you can’t do in images (and far fewer things you can do in images that you can’t do in writing). I needed that reminder, because I’ve been really down on words lately.
I didn’t see the movie, but I can’t imagine it’d be any good, because the story isn’t really any good. The best parts about the book are… I don’t want to call them “plays on language” because that makes it sound trivial, but it’s something like that.
The book also reminded me that a single magical sentence or two can forgive an entire book for being harmlessly amusing. For me, these were the two magical sentences, which I have read at least 14 times:
Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.
“It’s just life,” they say.
