And I have to admit that I skipped an even greater percentage of Part 3 (of the 3 the book is divided into) set far in the future and dealing with the how’s and why’s of the descendants evolution and history, and genetic theory behind it all. At least, it takes far too much effort on the part of the reader to keep up with what’s in the writer’s head. (It’s not a spoiler to reveal that it’s the unexplained destruction of the moon – this happens on page 1, pretty much.) I found myself skipping / skimming over long tracts of text because, really, I only have so much interest in how bodies move in orbit (and I know most of that anyway), but also the endless descriptions of space stations got rather tedious at times – there is only so much you can really describe with words when talking about such imaginary constructs. If you want a layman’s introduction – but fairly comprehensive for all that – to orbital mechanics or genetics, this is the book for you, but I can’t help think he may have done better to write two books: one – non-fiction - about these topics, and another – novel – about how mankind might survive such an apocalyptic event as takes place in the book. On one level it’s very good and very clever – its fault maybe is that it’s too clever by half, and the clever bits get in the way of the story.
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