Strange book following two characters in the same universe. Some parts contain a strong satire of soviet habits, rules, institutions, done for people that have previous background in that part of history. The book does not try to explain anything, even more than that it makes everything terribly hard to make any sense of, but creates a certain feeling in the process which is part of why it is interesting. Touches many archetypes such as nature, village/town, hierarchy, human relations but all is a blur from which it is hard to discern clear ideas. ( )

Yes, this is different but brilliant...just sit back and go along for the ride. ( )

I can't do it. I read two chapters of this and can't take the nonsense dialogue and repetition any more. You might say that two chapters isn't enough but it was almost fifty pages and it really was that bad. Maybe if I hadn't been struggling with books lately I would have tried harder. Maybe. Probably not. ( )

I love the Strugatsky brothers. They have a way with words, a way with characters, and their stories are never remakes of the Marvel universe. They're just brilliant all over (yes, their butts too). But this particular nut was just a little too hard for this particular skull, at this particular meeting of skull and nut. No. I'm misunderstanding myself. It's rather that the squirrel of motivation is already too sated to spend its twilight years honing the sledgehammer of hunger into the nano probe of zen necessary to finesse this nut, even if there is a delicious baby squirrel inside, just a lifetime of honing and a moment's finesse away.

Nonsense? I'm just getting you in the mood. Because this book is epically full of nonsense, though evidently on purpose. It paints a picture of contact between completely alien species, one of which is ours (so it could have actually made even less sense than it did). Nothing about the aliens makes sense to the humans, and eventually nothing about the humans makes sense to the reader. In that sense, it's a more realistic estimate of first contact than your "humans in alien clothing" type encounters you get with most sci-fi, though I had to mentally distance myself a few billion light years from this book before risking to use the word "realistic" in its direction. The reality painted here is endlessly absurd, and that absurdity eventually makes you skip sentences, paragraphs, and pages, when the neurons responsible for generating the feeling of confusion commit suicide en masse, and the neurons responsible for telling your bladder it's full all rush to fill the void. Then you're at the end, and you don't feel at all bad about the words skipped because all you want to do is make the nonsense stop. Luckily it does. Oh yes, I promise you, this book does end. I'd be relieved if I wasn't so exhausted.

That said, I'm still excited to read their other stuff. I think I have one or two left. ( )

It may be science fiction, but first and foremost it is a satire on the Soviet system. I guess you would have to live through it to fully appreciate it, but I was chuckling all the way from the beginning to the end. ( )