I was looking forward to reading this as it is considered a classic of science fiction and I love this genre. I finally got around to reading it and was somewhat disappointed. There is very little sci-fi material in the book to even consider it part of the genre, under my opinion. But I presume not to know more than those who have classified it thus.
My problem with this book is the fact that the plot could have been told in no more than five pages. The rest is character development, political and cultural descriptions of the fictional banana republic, and descriptions of the fictional religion. In fact, most of the rest of the book is about the republic's culture and politics, and about the religion and its beliefs.
If it were a short story, maybe ten pages long, I would probably have liked it.
It starts out great, then it winds down and meanders around for the most part of the book, until you reach the end where it revs up again, ending quite well. Mostly all of the plot is in the very beginning and the very end. As I stated before, the rest is the author musing about a fictional Caribbean banana republic and about a fictional new-age nihilistic pseudo-religion.
I had high hopes that haven't been fulfilled.
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