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Loading... This Fragile Earthby Susannah Wise
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. DNF @ page 107. There were some good ideas at the beginning which in the hands of a decent SF writer could have become an interesting take on how western civilizations cope when technology begins to break down, but this book concentrated on a woman and child to the detriment of those ideas. The women is whiny, neurotic and obsessed with her son even before things start going awry, and she doesn't get any better. The son is mostly written as a the 6yr old kid he's meant to be, but occasionally drops into "bored teenage know-it-all script kiddie" when the author wants to info-dump some coding info on us and can't think of how to do it within the story arc. They are trying to get out of London: I don't care. no reviews | add a review
What would you do to protect your family if the world stopped working? Not long from now, in a recognisable yet changed London, Signy and Matthew lead a dull, difficult life. They've only really stayed together for the sake of their six year old son, Jed. But they're surviving, just about. Until the day the technology that runs their world stops working. Unable to use their phones, pay for anything, even open the smart door to their flat, Matthew assumes that this is just a momentary glitch in the computers that now run the world. But then the electricity and gas are cut off. Even the water stops running. And the pollination drones - vital to the world, ever since the bees all died - are behaving oddly. People are going missing. Soldiers are on the streets. London is no longer safe. A shocking incident sends Signy and Jed on the run, desperate to flee London and escape to the small village where Signy grew up. Determined to protect her son, Signy will do almost anything to survive as the world falls apart around them. But she has no idea what is waiting for them outside the city... No library descriptions found. |
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For starters, I hated the main character Sig. I thought she was the most selfish person around, quite sluggish, detached and not a very good mother, I am afraid. So I spent the whole book disliking her quite a lot.
Then, I found that the author spent so much time describing the scenery, the paths taken, the routes and directions that it became muggy and tedious. Some descriptions weren’t very understandable, really.
Having gotten that out of the way, the story is quite mesmerising and scary at the same time. Also, quite possible, if we keep undertaking the route to AI that we are currently on. This is a good ‘end of the world as we know it’ theory and it just keeps the pages turning itself.
All in all, a very good read. ( )