I'm surprised this book made my list of top 100 science fiction books. I'm even more surprised this book won a hugo. This book would have been really good if it were written in the nineteenth century. It would have made a good book to read alongside Jules Verne. But it won the hugo in 1971. I did not think it was well written. I'm not sure the core idea was a good one. Most of the book seemed to be a soapbox for the main character, who I was not attached to. And there are plenty of books that I enjoy where I'm not attached to the main character, but this one didn't have anything else. If you don't like this bland main character, there isn't a more substantiative thing to latch onto. The whole extreme future thing is not touched upon. The Ethicals aren't touched upon. The River is barely touched upon. The interesting parts of the resurrection aren't touched upon. Instead we get Burton, a character from the nineteenth century that should have been written in nineteenth century. The last chapter picked up the pace quite it bit, but it was too late at that point, my interest was gone. The author must have been meaning to make some commentary about society, religion, or ethics. If that was the intention this book completely missed its mark. Perhaps I had to read it when it was first published in the seventies.

Another sci-fi classis I read as a teen and then reread as an adult, a couple of times! That is how much I loved this book.

Matter a fact, I may read it again and get my partner in on the fun!

What a Man book. The characters and plot were so full of testosterone and male chauvinism that sometimes it was very difficult not to roll my eyes. Don't get me wrong - there's a place for that just the same as there's a place in this world for Chic Lit, but apparently I wasn't expecting it. I picked this book up because it said "Hugo" on it (though not, it turns out, for this particular book - just for the author) and I'll read pretty much anything that's won a Hugo.



For all the overwhelming man-focus, I did enjoy the story. The premise - everyone from all of human history being resurrected along the shores of one apparently endless river - was fascinating, and Farmer's ideas on how humanity would cope/acquit themselves in such a situation are quite intriguing, probably accurate, and for that, a little depressing. The constant warring, fighting, struggling for power, followed inevitably by death and resurrection got a little tedious, but upon reading the conclusion, I'm much intrigued to find out what happens next.

After being worried that the story, written before my birth and once read at a point where I was half my current age, might not have held up to the test of time I can say my fears were not warranted. There is good reason why this book is a classic.

one of the first adult series I read as a youngster

What the fuck is this? Historical figure fan fiction? Really?

While halfway through, and thinking maybe I wouldn't bother reading the second part of the Riverworld saga (that handily comes in the same volume as this first part), I had a look at some of the reviews of later parts. One in particular mentioned how he wasn't really bothered who the Ethicals were; after all, it's all just made up, isn't it? That kind of encapsulated the way I was feeling at the time. In fact, I once wrote all fiction off in that way - during a time that I'd been a little disillusioned with reading. You can't write all fiction off in that way though. Crime and Punishment (picking an example from the top of my head) is all made up, but it contains a lot of truth and insight - not to mention tension and excitement. Catch 22 (picking another example from the top of my head) contains a lot of truth and a lot of humour. These kinds of things make stories that someone else has made up ultimately worthwhile.

And that is where I have a problem with To Your Scattered Bodies Go. It doesn't really seem to have any higher qualities, doesn't really seem to ask any interesting questions or seek any meaningful answers. Maybe the series will later on, but at this stage everything is so random and arbitrary. It isn't until more than halfway through the book that we even get any revelation about what the cause of everything is, and even then it seems to suddenly come out of nowhere.

The dialogue is basic and amateurish and the prose is curiously lacking in descriptive detail. It reads in fact, like a list of things that happened, rather than any kind of narrative. It's all stuff like, "he threw a spear. The spear entered the man's chest, and the man fell down and was dead". It just seemed like bad writing to me.

So I'm giving it three stars - purely because I spent such a lot of time sneering and thinking, what the fuck? Will I go on to read part 2? Well, since I already have it I expect I will some day. Am I curious as to what the outcome is? We-e-e-e-e-ll... not really. I just come back to that point of it all being made up. I feel like I could just make up the ending myself, and it wouldn't be any less rewarding. Time will tell, I guess.

I'm not very far in yet, maybe 20 pages, but I'm liking it. So far I've been introduced to Sir Richard Burton (not the one married to Elizabeth Taylor!), a Neanderthal, and Alice of Alice in Wonderland fame. And the alien that ended civilization as we know it. I've read that this is one of those sci-fi series that people LOVE, which may be true, but so far the writing is kind of amaturish. There's some weird expository stuff, such as (paraphrasing here), "Hey, see those big stone mushroom-looking things in the distance? They're spaced about a mile apart and they each have 700 divots on them." You've just been reincarnated, along with everyone else, EVER, and you're counting holes on a rock? THAT's what you do? We'll see if I want to continue the series . . .

Final review: You know what this is? It's fan-fic. Fan-fic about Richard Francis Burton (I know his middle name because it was mentioned a million times in the book). And it's poorly- written fan-fic, at that. And I'm pretty sure that Richard Burton is a Mary Sue.