Well, Farmer tried with this one. I mean, the concept was good. How to divide up the world evenly when you have too many people? When there is not enough land, can we do it by time? And how much would we miss the length of spring or summer if we got the full span of life over time?
Unfortunately, the whole is less than its parts. This whole book came across as very 70s despite having been published in 1985. It had a few pleasant quirks - the idea of fads being different by day and having to navigate that as you crossed from one into the other was fun. But I didn't care much about the mystery or the characters or the final, far too long chase.
I have both the sequels. I'll give the first a try. There was enough that I enjoyed that it deserves a second look, but not enough that I'm holding out much hope.
4 comments:
Good to have you doing these again!
'Dayworld' was a bit of a dud, I remember: interesting if implausible set-up, but all Farmer did was use it as a setting for a ho-hum mystery novel.
That's precisely how I felt about it.
Yay! You're back. ... Farmer is almost always a dud for me, despite the fact that he almost always starts with an interesting premise. The first book I ever read of his was a far-future fantasy post-apocalyptic novel, Dark is the Sun. Very readable, but ultimately hollow.
I wanted it to be better than it was, that's for sure.
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