What do You think about The Gods Of Riverworld (1998)?
I read this because I enjoyed the rest of the series although it is fairly different. There is a decent amount of action adventure and some of the most tense writing in the series however there is also a large section of exploitative philosophy in the middle. This is hardly surprising from someone who has used Cyrano De Bergerac in his novels. The question of what would humans do with infinite power is explored but diverted enough to make it interesting before it got tedious. A pleasingly surprising ending as well in terms of character development and old school plot twists.
—Charles Harrison
When I decided to make another pass through the Riverworld series, I was excited to see what I thought was a new-to-me book, Gods of Riverworld. I could clearly recall four books from the first time I'd read the series, but couldn't remember whether or not I'd read the fifth. As it turns out, there was a good reason I couldn't remember.Reading the very first sentence, I got the feeling that I had, in fact, read this book at least once. I thought it was odd that I couldn't remember anything in advance, but could only recall passages as I read them ... but as I made my way through the book, I made a good guess as to why.Gods of Riverworld was, in a sense, an afterthought: Farmer had originally intended to write only four books, but ended up penning a fifth, and for good reason: there was so much more that could be told about the Tower. After all, we really only knew that the Ethicals had a computer, that it was dying, and that Alice saved it. Farmer hinted at some of the technology within the Tower, but not very much. What else could the Tower hold?As it turns out, what it could hold is clichés and poorly-tied-up plotlines. (view spoiler)[Yeah, all this happened on a backup computer that I just decided to make, and that was possible even though the existing computer is so massive and also organic. Of course it never occurred to us to make a backup computer, even though we've done this who knows how many times and prepared any number of planets this way ... and yet it was this simple. (hide spoiler)]
—Dave
Se confirma la caída en barrena de la serie. De una idea inicial tremenda y unos primeros momentos de exploración que mantienen el interés, ha ido degenerando hasta este añadido a la serie, una especie de cuento sobre el poder "ilimitado" con un toque de policiaca que no se sostiene. Añade unas pocas respuestas que no convencen e incluso estropean más el final seco y soso del cuarto volumen. Mejor quedarse solo con "A vuestros cuerpos dispersos", en las continuaciones hay cosas interesantes de leer pero la zanahoria con las explicaciones viene ya pocha, no merece la pena.
—David
