Scan barcode
A review by neilcake
To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer
3.0
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.
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.