City at the End of Time

Rating NR Genre sci-fi Author Greg Bear Publisher Del Rey

In a word, Greg Bear’s science fiction novel can best be described as muddled.  Bear’s novel follows two rather complicated stories which included many smaller and very distinct stories inside them with no obvious connection.  The novel follows three characters; Ginny, Jack, and Daniel.  Ginny and Jack have dreams that take their consciousness into the future where they become Jebrassy and Tiadba living in a futuristic and beautiful city referred to as the Kalpa. However, Daniel dreams of nothingness.  All three answer a newspaper ad that will help reveal who they really are: fate-shifters. Each possesses something very important and ancient, a sum-runner, which remains unchanged throughout all history.  With this item and their ability to change they can save the future, but they are being hunted.

Bear seems to describe many actions and scenes in this novel with painstaking detail, much like how Jane Austen can take pages just to describe a book on a shelf.  But oddly enough these painstaking details only seem to leave the reader more confused. The segments of description seem to have no cohesion with the huge amount of vague dialogue. Over all I felt the book was very hard to follow.  It contained many interesting concepts but never fully tied everything together.  It is a long novel, but all too easy to keep the pages turning quickly without actually comprehending the contents. 

The book was disappointing and way too chaotic.  If you plan on reading this book make sure you take your time and really think about what each description and each set of dialogue means.