Abandoning this one at about the 50% mark. I gave it the ol' college try, but turns out this really ain't for me. Densely written, huge passages of world-building (and terraforming), but not enough of a propulsive plot or engaging characters to keep me turning the pages.

This book just made me happy. Wonderfully, giddily happy. That's the TL;DR version: if you like nearish future sf and you would consider yourself small-l liberal and enjoy a bit of adventure and politicking, oh this is awesome. Why?There's the gender aspects. Robinson goes beyond gender-bending and into gender-thwarting. I first really realised something was going on when a new character was introduced and for the entire interaction, there were no pronouns used. And it's a gender-neutral name. S...

This was a slightly more difficult book than is usual, but no less satisfying for having read it. I remember the Mars Trilogy with great fondness but I also remember it being stuffed full of invention and depth that most tales have no more than a gloss. This novel is very much like his previous novels in this regard. I am at once in awe and fully satisfied with the tale as I am also annoyed at how long it took to have the human aspect developed. If anyone had told me during the first 300 pages t...

For the past three years, I’ve paid for the privilege of voting in the Hugo Awards. I do this not because I love voting in the Hugo Awards (though that’s cool) but because, for the past few years, they have made available a voter packet containing digital copies of most of the nominated works. All I need do is purchase a supporting membership at the year’s WorldCon, which is always cheaper than if I were to buy the various novels and anthologies in which these works might be found. (Also, all th...

So at 65% I finally just kicked this pig and stopped reading. This book is objectively terrible. The story is foolish and non existent, no one involved is sympathetic or even slightly interesting. The main character actually gets her way by threatening to scream, at one point. I was constantly reminded of the twilight books.The world is goodish, unless you have ever read any other trans humanist books. The only people I can recommend this book to are extreme liberals. Unwashed hippies, reeking o...

This was my second book by Kim Stanley Robinson, and I have to say that I like his books. He’s got a very unique writing style. Most of all: I love his world building, it is fascinating. He’s got amazing visions of the future. I always liked astronomy, when I was younger, I enjoyed reading about planets, stars and the whole world we know so little about... 2312 reminded me that I used to inquire into these things, and I’m greatful for this. I was fascinated by the chapters where planets and moon...

I may be overdosing on this particular susgenre, since I read Blue Remembered Earth recently, and The Quiet War not long before that. They essentially tell the same story, but whats disturbing is that they essentially come to the same conclusion. All of this seems to come down to the Richard Florida version of the future. The 24th century for hipsters. They're liberal-geek amusement parks. A guided tour of one half of the western culture war. The roller coaster of exciting new urbanism. The merr...

*edit: bugger that, I’m upping it from 4 to 5 stars because I can’t give such a confident book anything less.I continue to be in awe of this vast universe Robinson has created. The posibilities are as endless as space itself, and I’ll eagerly pick up any book written about the people who populate this world where humans have expanded to other planets, terraforming and working and living their now medically prolonged lives.The plot is somewhat simple and has been done before, the threat of artifi...

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

I read maybe one sci-fi book a year. My barrier to entry is generally the writing itself. 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. 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. (It's not for nothing that S...

Now, this is quite the space travelogue to enjoy! I only wish it was longer since I totally didn't want the book to end.Q:Saint George, a social terrarium in which the men think they are living in a Mormon polygamy, while the women consider it a lesbian world with a small percentage of male lesbians. (c)Q:“So you have a sequence of thoughts that wander from one thought to the next in a more or less continuous flow, free associating from one topic to the next, across all the possible thoughts you...

I tried to read this book. I really tried. But after fighting to get halfway through this book without even being able to figure out what the plot was, I gave up.I had read a lot of positive reviews for this book, so I decided to give it a read. Now I wonder if these reviewers read the same book I tried to read. The plot, at least up to the point where I gave up, hadn't progressed (in fact, I don't even know what the plot was). And I really wasn't invested in the characters.Now this book did hav...

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It has an extremely interesting structure that verges on the allegorical. There's an alchemical marriage of Mercury and Saturn, The dynamic of old and emerging structures embedded in the present, three prose styles,- all very clever. A duet of Swan and Frog.The lovers spin like Pluto and Charon, around the two plot Lagrange points of an endless walk beneath the surface of Mercury, and waiting to be rescued in the blackness of space- two p...

I was afraid for a long time that all the literary crap in this book was covering up what was really an overdone, boring plot.It turned out not to be true - the plot is cool - but the plot only inhabits about 100 pages of this monster 6 or 7 hundred pager of a capital-N Novel.Really, Kim Stanley Robinson, did we need random-ish, unfathomable "lists" between each chapter? Actually, I can answer that for you. No.And really, Kim Stanley Robinson, did you have to format your very cool, forgivably in...

This is yet another brilliant book by Kim Stanley Robinson. Some remarkable future concepts and very scary scenarios. A superb plot and wonderful characters make this a fabulous read. Bring me more!!

Leaning towards 3.5 stars.I'm in two minds about this novel that takes place in the same universe as his Mars trilogy.I really liked the typical holistic KSR approach where he presents his idea of a possible future on a variety of scientific and social fields. As always I stopped from time to time to research some of the topics he mentioned, which among other things lead to me listening to Beethoven’s symphonies as accompanying soundtrack (and Holst’s planets – not mentioned in the book, but qui...

I hate to rate this so low. The book was pretty ambitious and quite detailed. The story follows Swan, a 130 year old woman living on Mercury who finds herself in the middle of a terrorist plot.The world as imagined by Robinson is quite amazing. Humans now inhabit most of the planets and thousands of asteroids. Swan is expert at designing worlds and it is quite compelling to read about hollowed out asteroids with completely fabricated eco-systems inside them. My problem is probably not with the b...