Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed Echopraxia by Peter Watts
Review of 'Echopraxia' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Surely the best part of this novel was the author's notes section at the back of the book where all the scientific interests that inspired Watts to write this novel are listed and explored to some degree. In the novel itself, those are probably the only worthy bits. Watts excels at creatively expressing the realized points of speculative theories and Echopraxia is a successful Hard Scifi novel in that regard. Sadly, in all other regards this story cannot compare to Blindsight. He ditched emotional connection and chose interior lecture hall and the result was unsurprisingly easy for me to ditch altogether. If you are in the mood to contemplate the scientific underpinnings of this story and would rather set aside the mushy stuff of Blindsight (or, like, literature) then you will enjoy this book very much. His creative synthesis of theory into something like a plot is dazzling for its …
Surely the best part of this novel was the author's notes section at the back of the book where all the scientific interests that inspired Watts to write this novel are listed and explored to some degree. In the novel itself, those are probably the only worthy bits. Watts excels at creatively expressing the realized points of speculative theories and Echopraxia is a successful Hard Scifi novel in that regard. Sadly, in all other regards this story cannot compare to Blindsight. He ditched emotional connection and chose interior lecture hall and the result was unsurprisingly easy for me to ditch altogether. If you are in the mood to contemplate the scientific underpinnings of this story and would rather set aside the mushy stuff of Blindsight (or, like, literature) then you will enjoy this book very much. His creative synthesis of theory into something like a plot is dazzling for its creativity. If you want a novel full of the kinds of characters that made Blindsight so unique you might want to look elsewhere.