I liked the movie more; this one sort of winds up before it starts. The beginning is quite brilliant, and it's a good book to bring on a trip. ( )

I liked the movie more; this one sort of winds up before it starts. The beginning is quite brilliant, and it's a good book to bring on a trip. ( )

I liked the movie more; this one sort of winds up before it starts. The beginning is quite brilliant, and it's a good book to bring on a trip. ( )

The Children of Men by P.D. James wasn’t exactly what I was expecting when I picked the book up. Sure, it had the movie tie-in cover, and I’d seen parts of the film, but the book was completely unlike any of the parts of the movie that I could recall. Maybe that’s a good thing, however. It certainly reaffirmed my stance on reading a book before seeing the movie based on it.

As I was reading, I really didn’t get into The Children of Men. It had an interesting premise: all the men on Earth had become infertile so the human race had less than a century left in existence. A little sci-fi for my taste, but it was something I thought I could deal with. As the novel unfolded, though, I really found myself disliking the main character, Theo Faron. To me, he came off as arrogant, even when he finally agreed to aid a gang of dissidents known as the Five Fishes who were looking to change the way England was governed. I really couldn’t get past Theo being ostentatious, and this definitely affected my reading of the book.

There were so many ways this plot could go, but it ended up being lackluster and unfulfilling. I was bored by this novel, and I don’t often feel that way after reading a book. To me, it was anticlimactic and slow, and Theo falling in love with Julian, a woman who miraculously got pregnant, seemed forced and almost an afterthought. I’m not discrediting P.D. James as an author because I enjoyed her prose, and maybe The Children of Men wasn’t a good foray into her writing, but I think it’s going to be a while before I try something else by her, if I ever do. ( )

If you've seen the movie and haven't read the book yet, prepare to have your mind blown. It is unbelievable that the movie and the book even share the same title. They are completely different. Honestly, if they had named the movie something different, I never would have connected it to this wonderful book. The book is amazing; I love dystopian lit, and this book has everything that makes a good dystopian novel. I feel that this book could definitely hold its own among books like 1984, We, and The Handmaid's Tale. ( )