Yes! I didn’t really care for the framing - it felt really indulgent even though most of the reviews praise Winton’s economical prose. Really? The stoic narrative voice was kind of uninspiring, very “we did this and then we did that”, it didn’t resonate with me. The dialogue with the bowman was suuuuper clunky. In an apocalyptic world, who TF is actually going to keep someone alive to listen to them recount their lives for the span of an entire book?!
I appreciate it as an important work warning us of the future, forcing us to realise what our lives right now are leading to, but as a piece of fiction… it definitely didn’t have the same impact on me that other TW or cli-fi books have had
Yes! I didn’t really care for the framing - it felt really indulgent even though most of the reviews praise Winton’s economical prose. Really? The stoic narrative voice was kind of uninspiring, very “we did this and then we did that”, it didn’t resonate with me. The dialogue with the bowman was suuuuper clunky. In an apocalyptic world, who TF is actually going to keep someone alive to listen to them recount their lives for the span of an entire book?!
I appreciate it as an important work warning us of the future, forcing us to realise what our lives right now are leading to, but as a piece of fiction… it definitely didn’t have the same impact on me that other TW or cli-fi books have had
it’s an important subject, doesn’t mean it’s a good book
my fave books on climate change are still the Helliconia series