[lemming]

I have lost all curiosity about how it will turn out.

Me too, Erfael... in fact that's what I'm doing here. Oh, I thought, why not read the book club thread? Nothing they "give away" is going to affect anything now, and maybe the gang will convince me to keep reading.

But I'm not sure what I would keep reading for, now. I seem to have met the characters, seen the world, gotten the idea (ok, so I did that ten pages in), I already don't give a rat's about the ending... and after about the first chapter I was already thinking Cool. This'd make a cool... novella. Which is what this is. A long story or a short novella, BLOATED BEYOND BELIEF, LIKE AN EXPLODING CLAY DITTO CRAWLED UP ITS BUTT RIGHT WHEN IT WAS HEADED TO THE PUBLISHER. Auuugggghhhh!!! I can't believe I'm reading something by the genius who wrote Earth, and not only that, I rather fear this is going to keep more people from discovering Earth. This is just too silly and too much of a one-idea book to be so long, or to be marketed as some masterpiece of thinking about identity. I mean, it is cute. But I can't believe I paid money for it, and I have so little reading time these days that I doubt I'll finish it beyond skimming the ending. The Phoenix Exultant is sitting in my living room and it's a lot shorter (although since it's part of a trilogy I can't exactly hold it up as an example of un-bloated work), and pretty much any book in my stack is going to be better. :mad:

Brin is now on my "read with extreme caution" list, which is unusual for an author with a book on my "top 10 SF novels ever" list. Oh well.

SusF, glad you liked it; glad someone did! :)

And to put in my off-topic $0.02 about length... I agree with those who thought Cryptonomicon deserved (most of) the pages given to it. I am definitely worried about Quicksilver and the length/quality issue, but not nearly enough to keep me from reading it.

[Archren]

BTW, totally off-topic (bad Archren! No Biscuit!):

For those who love the Uplift universe and really love the way Brin does aliens, he's put out a thin little book called "Contacting Aliens" that is like a field guide to the galactic society and all the aliens mentioned in his Uplift Books. It even has pictures, and is often written with a lot of humor. Highly recommended.

[LordBalthazar]

Wow. Some very interesting responses to this book - and not at all what I expected given that Kiln People had made several lists of the Top 100 Science Fiction Novels.

I found the premise (dittos, the ultra-surveillance) very intriguing - although I have to agree with a couple of Mugwamp's points. The twists and turns certainly did keep on coming, so much so that, when all was said and done, I was left thoroughly bewildered. To quote our protoganist near book's end: "...the interconvoluted logic fell right out of my floppy brain". I hear ya. It also felt overly long, especially around the middle of the book where whole chapters were dedicated ditYosil's endless esoteric ramblings. Up until then, I was very much enjoying Kiln People and, unlike Mugwamp, really liked the mutiple protagonist narrative.

There were passages in this book that had me laughing out loud (ie. "Poor, doomed realYosil! It's one thing to see death coming at the hands of your own creation. That's part of the human epic tradition, after all. Oedipus and his father. Baron Frankensetein and his monster. William Henry Gates and Windows '09"), and Brin did offer up some interesting characters (Green Frankie and Palloid weasel). But, sadly, the wheels came off for me once the grey ditto became audience to ditYosil's endless speeches. Which brings to mind my biggest question: What made Albert so special? We learn that this is not the first time that his dittos have been experimented upon, that Albert's dittos are superior to your average run-of-the-mill dittos. Was this just a convenience on the part of the author?

All in all, I didn't hate Kiln People. In fact, there were parts of this book that I thoroughly enjoyed. If only it had been a little tighter...

[Yobmod]

I didn't quite hate it, but i disliked it a lot by the end. A nice enough premise, but the plot was longwinded and boring, completely unacceptable in a detective thriller. And as most people have said, it was hugely overlong and flabby, and the metaphysical ending felt like it was intending for another book altogether.

I also didn't like most of the punning. The fact that the Ditto technology pervaded all of society is not reason enough for people to contantly use puns related to dittos or clones or clay etc. In the real owrld, people have better things to do than think of mobile phone related puns etc.
Some of the puns also made little sense, as they were used by characters in dialogue, but wouldn't have sounded any different from normal speach, as it was only a change in spelling (not pronunciation).