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Liked It “Raspberrymocha55 said: 4 stars |
Didn’t Like It1 of 1 members found this review helpful “If you start reading '2061,' don't stop until you've finished, because once you put it down, you WON'T want to pick it back up again. This is a horrible, horrible book. |
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“Not a great follow up to 2010. More time spent on expounding the great things that have happened since 2010 that moving a concrete story forward. I would not recommend to those who enjoyed 2010.”
Benjamin H wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Certainly not one of the worst books I have read. I feel that the most important part of the story was too brief. It's almost like Arthur C. Clark misplaced like three chapters and said "fuck it".”
NIDA THE LIVING DEAD wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“A minor addition to the "2001" series”
Norman H wrote this review Thursday, September 3 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“This edition of the series was ... ok ... but I never got a sense of urgency or suspense. It was interesting to read about landing on Halley's Comet and seeing what Europa was like. Ultimately, though, there was no, "This is so cool; I can't wait to see what happens next," as in 2001 and 2010. What ever happened to Poole? I thought that would enter into this book but it didn't. Oh, and before I forget -- in the forward, Clark implied an explanation as to why the setting shifted from Saturn (in 2001) to Jupiter (in 2010 and 2061): multiple universes! So really these books might not even take place in the same reality. Oh, great. Hopefully 3001 will reach a bit further.”
felixjer wrote this review Saturday, May 16 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“Raspberrymocha55 said: 4 stars
Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review Friday, May 15 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
This is the third installment of Clarke's Odyssey series. 51 years have elapsed since the planet Jupiter was turned into the solar system's second sun Lucifer. The earth 's climate has changed dramatically due to the lack of night caused by light from both the sun and Lucifer. Jupiter's surviving moons are now planets orbiting the new sun. Heywood Floyd, 105 years old, is a passenger on a pioneering flight to check out Haley's comet. Meanwhile his grandson, Chris Floyd, is an officer aboard a spaceship which is hijacked and consequently is crash landed upon the forbidden planet of Europa.
I find that this book is becoming more far fetched than the original. It is still an entertaining read. However, one needs to read the first 2 books of this series, or little of what transpires will make sense.
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“This is the third installment of Clarke's Odyssey series. 51 years have elapsed since the planet Jupiter was turned into the solar system's second sun Lucifer. The earth 's climate has changed dramatically due to the lack of night caused by light from both the sun and Lucifer. Jupiter's surviving moons are now planets orbiting the new sun. Heywood Floyd, 105 years old, is a passenger on a pioneering flight to check out Haley's comet. Meanwhile his grandson, Chris Floyd, is an officer aboard a spaceship which is hijacked and consequently is crash landed upon the forbidden planet of Europa.
Raspberrymocha55 wrote this review Wednesday, May 13 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
I find that this book is becoming more far fetched than the original. It is still an entertaining read. However, one needs to read the first 2 books of this series, or little of what transpires will make sense.”
“A fictional glimpse at the fantastical discoveries that await those as in love with nature as Arthur C. Clarke clearly was.”
Katie wrote this review Friday, May 1 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“An interesting story, but not as strong as the first two. This one takes a slightly different take on the story line that Clarke started. It isn't as heavy into following the story of Dave Bowman and HAL.”
Charles T wrote this review Saturday, April 18 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No1 of 1 members found this review helpful“If you start reading '2061,' don't stop until you've finished, because once you put it down, you WON'T want to pick it back up again. This is a horrible, horrible book.
Cory Anne wrote this review Thursday, January 8 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
The story starts out strong enough, but quickly goes downhill starting with Chapter 4. There are so many sub-plots suddenly starting up in random places that it starts to feel like the book doesn't know what story it wants to tell. And the sub-plots are suddenly dropped just as quickly as they appeared; and all of them done so without being even remotely resolved.
The biggest disappointment is when you reach the end of the book. Despite all of the painful and unsuccessful build-ups to the finale, the book just suddenly STOPS. There's no real resolution, and certainly no explanations!, to everything that took place in the 276 pages, and the story closes with a very forced 'happy-ever-after' feeling and a painfully unsuccessful attempt at a sequel set-up.
The book has seemingly endless flaws but only a small handful of them are severe enough to frustrate any reader:
1. There are numerous main characters that serve no purpose but to apparently flesh out the story so it fills its page count quota. The majority of the non-essential main characters have almost no background to them what-so-ever, and one of them has a name that sounds so familiar that readers will be reaching for '2010' just to make sure that the character wasn't magically raised from the dead.
2. Minor characters are given WAY too much time 'center stage' and have so much background information to them that by the time they serve their plot-advancing purpose, you can't help but wonder what the heck Clarke must have been thinking when he wrote the book. But the most vital minor character (who should have been a main one) appears with literally NO background at all. And despite hints that there's going to be a revelation about their true identity, the reader receives nothing more than the proverbial Valentine card that says 'Screw you!'
3. WAY too much time is devoted to talking about the USSA: The United States of South Africa. '2061' is confusing and frustrating enough without Clarke trying to force an African civil war/over-throwing of the government/terrorist groups take-over. The USSA serves virtually no purpose to the story, and an American or Russian terrorist group/shadow government would have worked just as well.
4. The 'big reveal' that Bowman is supposed to make according to the synopsis on the back of the book? Forget it. Dave, and HAL, only show up in the very last chapter, and their conversation is anything but 'extraordinary.'
5. But '2061's' biggest downfall is that Clarke seems to have checked-out just as much as the readers will. It was as if he suddenly got bored with writing the story, or realized that no matter what he did with it, it wasn't going to work, that he just gave up and finished it as quickly as he could. The flow of the narrative is interrupted so often with ill-timed scene jump-cuts that you quickly give up any hope of keeping track of who characters are and what's going on. The grammatical errors are so numerous and unforgivable that you're left longing for the over-use of commas that plagued the first two books: sentences have been ended with commas or without any punctuation at all; there are periods where commas should have been; sentences were started without capitalization; dialogue either wasn't closed, was closed with the wrong quotation marks, was run together with other characters' dialogue, or run together with the 3rd person narrative. Some of the narrative was even lead by quotation marks. But the most unforgivable error of all is when Clarke spends all of Chapter 45 talking about the WRONG SPACESHIP. If anyone starts wondering why the stranded spacers are talking about how their rescue ship suddenly crashed, don't worry: it isn't you. Clarke (and most likely his editor, as well) apparently stopped paying attention to what was going on in the story.
If '2061' is ever to be filmed, the poor writers stuck with creating the screenplay are going to have to do some major over-hauling to make the story even remotely appealing.
I wouldn't recommend this book to ANYONE, not even die-hard Clarke fans. There's no reason to read '2061' except to say that you've read the entire series. And my deepest sympathy to anyone who's already read the book or is planning to. I know *I* wish I had those three weeks of my life back...”
