Dark Orbit in Beyond Reality

Sep 11, 2018 Cheryl rated it liked it

At first this was choppy, very short episodes, actually saccades. And political intrigue, and the technique of introducing the reader to things she won't understand until later... I almost gave up. But then we got down to the planet and things are actually happening and it's very cool. Oliver Sacks would like it (he was a fan Star Trek after all).

(view spoiler)
The ending is inevitable, and ineffable.

3.5 stars rounde ...more

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Sep 14, 2016 Banner rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, alien

Escher

This has been on my radar awhile and have actually been waiting for it to go on sale on Amazon. The more I read the reviews and after reading the sample I decided to go for it (full price and all). I have not been disappointed!

Science fiction, when done right, deals with concepts that are different than our current reality. "What if?" questions. But not just "the weirder the better", these concepts need to be made to seem possible. And if your really lucky you get strong interesting chara ...more

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Oct 08, 2015 Jo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction

It is hard to talk about Dark Orbit without giving spoilers. It starts out as fairly standard Science Fiction. Then it takes a turn as a mystery. Just when I decided solving the mystery was the main theme it took another turn and became something else. Two different turns so surely that was the last one. But no. It just kept changing.

Just like the plot the main characters also changed. What looked like a minor character became the driving force in the story. Her journal entries start as just a s ...more

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Dec 01, 2015 MadProfessah rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015-read

My copy of this book has a prominent blurb by Ursula Le Guin and it's not hard to see why. The writing style and the FEEL of this book is very similar to Le Guin's.

This is both a blessing and a curse in some ways.

During the middle of the book I was somewhat annoyed by the lack of action and the attempt by the author to describe something which is basically indescribable. But what I realize now is that is precisely what the author wanted the reader to experience, just like the characters are expe ...more

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Jul 16, 2015 Chessa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sf_fantasy, 5-star-favorites-2015, space

Wow. I picked this book up rather randomly (on the recommendation of io9 maybe?) so I had little to no expectations about it, having never read anything else by the author.

I loved it. I can't stop talking about the ideas in it - about epistemology (how do we know what we know?), about our senses, and how they shape our experience (sight in particular). In some ways the Big Ideas were more important to me than the actual story, but I was truly pleasantly surprised by how good that was, too.

I'm ...more

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