Reviews
Found this book pretty insufferable, especially towards the end, despite its interesting premise and voice. I made a full video on it too.
Damn, golden age sci-fi was often about hope and optimism, and crash landings frequently turned into stories about human ingenuity. Years before grimdark became popular, Russ shatters these narratives. In this story, our protagonist realises the only possible end for their group is death, and she wants to be left alone so that she can pass on quietly. No futile attempt at rebuilding civilization from a small group for her. The high rating on this one is mostly for the historical significance of the piece. Such a plot is common in today's SF field, and the writing in this is quite dated. However, it's a powerful piece given the directness with which Russ handles the tragedies of these types of stories.
This took me longer to read than it should have. Interesting premise but I struggled to get through this. I feel like there should have been context about colonising planets in this book and more world building.
3.75 stars, maybe. I admit I appreciated the book more after going back and reading the introduction (which I had started but was super spoilery so I ended up skipping). It's cleverly written and mostly entertaining, but also very uncomfortable at times. (view spoiler)[ It started to drag out for me after the murders, where the inner dialogue takes over and becomes more and more rambling until the end - which is probably what happens when you starve to death anyway, but it was such a contrast from the first half of the book that made me pause. (hide spoiler)]
