The Globe and Mail loves Wonder
by Rob - April 27th, 2011.Filed under: Reviews, Wonder.
The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper reviewed Wonder, the “much anticipated finale to the WWW trilogy,” yesterday. I must say I like the opening:
Okay, new rule. Effective today, Canadian reviews of Robert J. Sawyer and his fiction should no longer begin with “Robert J. Sawyer is a Canadian science-fiction writer” or any variation on same. The fact is, Sawyer is one of Canada’s bestselling writers, winner of numerous prizes, with a high profile internationally and an exhaustive online presence. If you don’t know him by now, you should, and no single sentence summary in a review is going to help.And I like the closing, too:
Once again, Sawyer shows mastery in his ability to move between complex scientific concepts and genuine and realistic characters. Shifting between perspectives, from Caitlin or her family to a hacker in China to government employees in China and the United States, Sawyer explores the implications and opportunities presented by Webmind’s evolution and by extension serves up a healthy dose of social commentary and critique.You can read the whole review online here, and other reviews of Wonder are here.As with Watch, Wonder is written so that readers do not have to read the previous books to be able to follow the story, which is fast-paced and immediately engaging. Events from the previous book are smoothly introduced as needed, without detracting from the flow of the story. That said, there are nuances, themes and subtleties that flow beautifully when the trilogy is read as a whole, and the ability to take it as a work in its entirety, to savour the plot and allow the intricacies of the theories and concepts to meld in one’s mind, is definitely the preferred approach.
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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