Peter Watts - Echopraxia

Despite enjoying the first volume of this short series by Peter Watts, I found Echopraxia to be utterly incomprehensible. The story follows the adventures of a biologist Daniel Bruks who is caught up in a space mission to investigate events described in the first book, Blindsight. That novel was marked by some interesting discussions on the nature of consciousness and humanity, as well as a relatively clever first contact plot.

Echopraxia on the other hand is a constant stream of events that are impossible to understand as a story line. Things happen to characters for no apparent reason and are never explained. Characters are two dimensional cut outs that don't engage the readers sympathies. The reason for the space mission is unclear and what the characters are actually doing in space is never explained satisfactorily and in places the author inserts random bits of techno-babble seemingly to keep the reader convinced that this is actually a very clever piece of hard science fiction

The first volume is a decent piece of writing. The second is over-complicated, confusing and in places unreadable. Read the first if you like very hard science fiction and skip the second.

Related Reviews

Watts - Blindsight