04/25/2025
And then it was the third book to finish off the series (not including the short story I am not going to look for.). The good part is we are back to Mandela and Mary Gay from the first book which made me happy living on Middle Finger. I thought the book started strong and was very compelling with Man and the aliens. They wanted to shoot forward to 40,000 years into the future and I was all for that. I was like, finally, someone to do a different take on The Time Machine. But, that turned out to be 24 years when something mysterious took all their fuel.
It was still interesting when they got back to Middle Finger and found it empty. Then they headed to earth. Then the book zoomed through the ending so fast, I had to read some of it twice to first understand the creatures that had been on earth that were shapeshifters, then the unknown is revealed to be some godlike creature that was treating humans and the aliens like lab rats. Like the previous book, zooming through the end so fast robbed us of Haldeman’s great imagination. Then this massively powerful alien just says hey I’ll come back in a million years to see what is going on. If so, then why did they care if the humans were only going forward 40,000? It just didn’t work for me. So much to love in this novel, I would have liked to see the ending developed so much more, and, honestly, I wanted to see 40,000 in the future.
2025-20
