Annals of the Heechee

Rating:
Summary: Been through 3, why not a fourth?
Review: Like the Rama series by Clarke, the Gateway series started out as something seemingly far different from what it became. In the end, all questions are answered, all things revealed... but did we need all of that? If you want to know the final answer to everything, reading Annals of the Heechee will give it to you, but sometimes things are best left to rest. This final story is set up entirely to give the reader the answer, but in doing so alot is sacrificed in terms of the actual tale. It can be finished in two or three hours for a slow reader (like myself), so if you just gotta know reading this won't be a signifigant task. On the other hand, if the mystery of things is what enchanted you to begin with, leaving a sleeping dog lie may be the better alternative.

For those thinking about reading the whole series, it may even be recommendable to stick with just the first two books. 3 and 4 just seem to beat things to death.

Rating:
Summary: INTERESTED IN YOUR PAST?
Review: Mr. Pohl, I think we are related. I have a cousin that looks exactly like a photo I had seen in our local newspaper. We are from the Chicago Pohl"s.

Rating:
Summary: INTERESTED IN YOUR PAST?
Review: Mr. Pohl, I think we are related. I have a cousin that looks exactly like a photo I had seen in our local newspaper. We are from the Chicago Pohl"s.

Rating:
Summary: Should've stopped at 3
Review: The first book was one of the best sci fi novels I've ever read, the next two were also very enjoyable, but I have to say, this one almost reads either like someone else wrote it using Pohl's notes, or Pohl himself wrote it but only under extreme duress. Characters I had grown to love were reduced in this story to one-dimensional thumbnails. Earlier in the series, I had truly felt Robin's pain, his guilt, and later, I felt a certain satisfaction in watching him struggle through the whole thing and grow as a character, achieving success, and maybe more importantly piece of mind. In this story he was completely annoying and so was his wife. Gaahh! What a shame this was the closer! If you enjoyed the first three books in the story, do what I wish I had done - walk away from this one and forget you ever saw it.

Rating:
Summary: INTERESTED IN YOUR PAST?
Review: While the first three volumes of the Heechee Sage proved highly engrossing and ingenious, "Annals of the Heechee" fails to live up to its predecessors. All of Pohl's well-devised characters seem reduced here to annoying stereotypes of themselves, repeating their idiosyncracies ad nauseum, rather than growing and changing. Too much of the book is devoted to reciting incidents of the previous books and impromptu science lectures by Albert Einstein. The movement of the plot is slow, and what few conflicts arise are quickly defused.

The book's conclusion is interesting enough (as well as abrupt, in the Pohl tradition), and while it is satisfying to finally find resolution to (most of) the great mysteries of the saga, it is not on par with what one would expect from such a promissing story to date.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing conclusion to the Heechee Saga
Review: While the first three volumes of the Heechee Sage proved highly engrossing and ingenious, "Annals of the Heechee" fails to live up to its predecessors. All of Pohl's well-devised characters seem reduced here to annoying stereotypes of themselves, repeating their idiosyncracies ad nauseum, rather than growing and changing. Too much of the book is devoted to reciting incidents of the previous books and impromptu science lectures by Albert Einstein. The movement of the plot is slow, and what few conflicts arise are quickly defused.

The book's conclusion is interesting enough (as well as abrupt, in the Pohl tradition), and while it is satisfying to finally find resolution to (most of) the great mysteries of the saga, it is not on par with what one would expect from such a promissing story to date.