Monday, August 7, 2023

Central Station, by Lavie Tidhar

I actually liked this book, but just barely enough to give it four stars. It's not really a novel--it started out as a series of short stories and novellas that have enough of a relationship to sequence them. So I didn't get a sense of continuous plot progression so much as a series of snapshots. Maybe more lifelike. I liked the characters enough to rate it well--there is a lot going on and they lead full, complex lives. Central Station is set on an Earth that has worked through some of the problems we have today and feels like it is past the crisis point. So I hope we can get to something like this, it's much better than I expect.

Central Station is science fiction, with a heavy dose of magical realism. Characters like Ibrahim the alten-zachsen man inhabit a space somewhat beyond human. It makes this book difficult to classify, in a reasonably good way. It's not a totally amazing book but it is an amazing world. I'm reading Neom now, we'll see if the novel inhabiting this space enhances it.

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