Susanne's Reviews > The Departure

Disclaimer: I love the Polity novels. I adored The Skinner. I'm a fan.

This is tough. There are bits here that I absolutely loved and wanted more of, especially the Antares Base storyline (I'll read the next in the series just to find out how they cope out there), the overthrowing of an oppressive, murderous regime, the post-scarcity worldbuilding, the human/technology interface. Lovely, lovely science fiction.

But then there's the agony of following Alan Saul Every. Step. Of the way. And I mean, every single step. Every nook and cranny of whatever environment he's in, every feature of his expanded mind, every virtual button he clicks, every nut and bolt of a bulkhead... EVERYTHING is described and explained in such torturous detail, it just didn't hold my attention, and that's not normally something I have problems with. I ended up skimming from dialogue to dialogue throughout the entire second half of the book (except for the Antares Base sections, ofc).

When there is action, it's engaging. When there is dialogue, it's fascinating to see Alan lose his grip on his own humanity. The world building itself is superb (just overdone) and I do want to know what happens next. It's just hard to love this as much as I wanted to.