The Freeze-Frame Revolution ~ Peter Watts (Sunflower Cycle)
★★★☆☆
I received this eARC from Tachyon Publications on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of this book in any way.
It wasn't a cage if it kept moving. It wasn't a prison if we could go anywhere.
The Writing and Worldbuilding
The writing style was very unique, so interwoven with Sunday's own voice that it felt like someone speaking to you a lot of the time (besides the science rants that really put the "science" in "science fiction"). Because of the science-y parts, I found the book actually quite difficult to get through, though the story did intrigue me. The climax was really great, especially because of all the build-up toward it. The ending, however, was very unresolved and just a little too open-ended for me. In other words, there was no clear conclusion and I was just left confused.
I feel like some aspects of this would have been better told as a film, namely characters. There were so many names being thrown around, and especially after science rants, I found myself having cleared all my name caches to make room for theoretical physics and quantum mechanics or whatever, and not knowing who the heck anyone was other than Sunday (obviously), Chimp, and Lian. If this was a film, then visuals would have played a huge role in helping me know who's who. This book gave basically zero physical descriptions, so all I had to go by was names.
I loved the themes and the grey morality of Chimp, though it was nothing I haven't seen before.
"I want to see how it turns out.""It.""Everything. The universe. This--reality. This hologram, this model, whatever we're in. It had a start, it's got an endpoint, and the closer we get to it the clearer it becomes. If we just hang in there long enough we'll at least get to see the outlines.""You want to know the purpose of existence?""I want to know the destination of existence. Anything less is selling out."
The Characters
Sunday: She was sassy and interesting, but I got the sense that nothing really mattered from her. If she had died and another character took her place, I really wouldn't have cared tbh.
Chimp: I loved Chimp! He was honestly such an intriguing AI because he isn't a genius, and he has these almost human qualities to him that made him really interesting to read.
Lian: I liked her at first, but as it went on, she really started to piss me off.
All the people I constantly forgot existed: Well, they were background for the most part and when they weren't supposed to be background, I just got confused.
Conclusion
It was a very interesting read, and overall, I enjoyed it, but I'm unlikely to read anything else in this series (it's part of a series btw lol though you don't necessarily have to read it in order) or maybe even by this author. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone only used to reading YA, but people who already understand and enjoy hard sci-fi might really enjoy this.
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