Not too long ago I read Peter Watts' Blindsight, and it has many thought-provoking ideas about conscience, the human brain, and alien life. Yet it is wrapped in a mediocre sci-fi action movie script that is difficult to follow and stops making sense toward the end. So I cannot say that I exactly liked or disliked it.

And just now, I finished Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series, and it feels like books 2 and 3 (Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy) are entirely separate story from book 1 (Ancillary Justice). The latter books are okay for what they are, but do not live up to the style, scale, and pace of the first book, and leave some of the concepts entirely unexplored. So once again, I cannot exactly say that I loved the series.

Any other books that left you with similar dual opinions?

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[–] Yaky@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's interesting about Gravity's Rainbow.

I had the exact opposite reading Cryptonomicon: it was not bad and sometimes rather interesting to read, but looking back, it was 900 pages of wannabe hackers and WWII dudes, tied together with barely 100 pages worth of plot.

[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I have the same opinion as you of Cryptonomicon. It was... fine? Maybe if I had read it 25 years ago my opinion would have been different, but reading it now it just felt old-timey and uninteresting.