Earth by David Brin

Earth is a science fiction novel by David Brin.

Normally I never give up on a book, but I guess that it had to happen and now I have to decide whether it is fair to review a book that I have not read all the way through. But then again, why do I have to be fair to a book that has wasted so much of my time? I have read about 260 pages, plus the twelve-page afterword, out of the 680 pages in this book (including afterword and epilogue) and I can't remember when I last was this bored with a book.

There are a couple of problems with this book. 1) It's disjointed – the chapters are very short and between each chapter there's a small press clip or news bit. This totally ruins the flow of the book. 2) The characters are uninteresting and without an interesting background – a third trough the book I would like just one character that I care about, please! 3) In the afterword Brin writes about the hardship of writing a 50 years extrapolation and he says "Beware of assumptions that seem 'obvious' in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.". Well Earth is quaint and it is just about a decade old. Ups.

I'm close to falling a sleep at the thought of writing a synopsis about this book, so I won't, but you'll find one on both Amazon and Book Pages (links above).

P.S. I just had a look at the Amazon.com page for Earth and the reviewers there seem to not only like this book but to actually love it! Well, Ce la vie!