Oh my god. What a terrible book. This has got to be the worst thing I have slogged through in years.
Robinson continues his exploration of a plot-less, meandering, point-less, navel-gazing, landscape-describing, list making and thesaurus using non-story of what should have been a compelling tale of humans moving beyond Earth.
The amount of time he spent re-exploring places he had described previously was stunning. As a matter of fact, after his endless descriptions of the place, I don't want to go. He bored me to death with his endless descriptions of sand, the colour of the sky and the kinds of snow on the surface. This would go on for ever without once MOVING THE PLOT FORWARD.
Why is this trilogy so highly regarded?
Sure Robinson is an incredibly smart guy. He has incredible depth of knowledge of humanities, science, engineering, geology, biology, chemistry and orbital mechanics but he can't tell a story in an interesting way.
He has managed to write over 1,500 pages of "story" that could have easily filled 400 and been far more interesting.
Each book simply gets worse in the telling and I cannot recommend the series.
Sorry, Mr. Robinson.
