It's difficult to summarize this book because it's really more a history of a possible future than a traditional novel. However, after 2312 I'm definitely intrigued. I haven't read the Mars trilogy, so I can't speak from personal experience. Kim Stanley Robinson is perhaps most famous for his Mars trilogy, and from what I gather this book is typical of his earlier style. (It's not for nothing that Star Trek: The Next Generation was my favorite show as a kid.) I'm happy to say 2312 is such a work. So, it's always a pleasant surprise when I encounter a work of sci-fi that's also really well written because I am a bit of a futurist at heart and love to delve into these worlds. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I find that most contemporary sci-fi books - as with most 'genre' books - tend to be poorly written, sacrificing craft in favor of the fascinating worlds, etc that they present. My barrier to entry is generally the writing itself. Some of the science is neat, but these characters jet around the solar system like no one's business, blasting past planets and YEARS in the plot a reference was made to an event that took place a year ago, when, in fact, the event had only happened a few pages earlier.Īdded to this, the book frequently devolved into these mindless interludes of technobabble that do little to further the story. Unfortunately, the character (by the time I stopped reading), had only a few 'chapters' to speak of. The only remotely interesting storyline in the book, Kiran, who has been transplanted to Venus to assist in terraforming, has any traction. She's a 140-something hermaphrodite of Chinese descent that grew up on Mercury (cool, right?), but at her age, she's completely self-absorbed, asks stupid questions, and selfishly makes HUGE decisions based upon input from an integrated AI in her brain: one day, she simply decided to start a revolution on Earth after seeing poor old people working in post-Saharan Africa's farms.

I don't care about the main protagonist AT ALL. I made it about 60% through before I could identify the problems. His world building is great, but something about the novels fail to grab me. I've tried to read Kim Stanley Robinson in the past, and I've managed to plow through. So I'm not actually done, but I couldn't make it through.

2312 kim stanley robinson review