This was the only KSR book that they had at the airport bookstore, it’s the finale of a trilogy that I haven’t read, so maybe it wasn’t the best place to start, but:

Oh man, what a total waste of time it was. It’s slow, the characters are unconvincing and uncompelling. The plot is plodding and obvious. The environmental science - supposedly the central axis of the book - feels grafted on, as if pages from an activist blog have been pasted in, arbitrarily, with no relation to the rest of the story.

I’m halfway through the last installment of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Forty/Fifty/Sixty trilogy. I love this author, and this may be his masterpiece. A couple morsels of food for thought:

The Department of Energy has an Intelligence Office. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Also, a quote from a homeless biology professor talking with a common homeless Vietnam vet:

“You should be a Buddhist,” Frank said. “You should talk to my Buddhist friends.”
“Yeah right. I don’t go in for that hippie shit.”
“It’s not hippie shit.”
“Yeah it is. How would you know.”
“I talk to them is how I know. I lived with them.”
“Oh. Well. That explains it then. But it also proves my point about them being hippies. I mean you don’t just live with people, do you.”