D was kind enough to lend me Light; and while I can't say I thought it a good book, I can't blame him for trying it out; it has many of the trappings of respectability.There are brief snatches - towards the end - when he is describing trivial things honestly - sand drifting in through a doorway - that I could almost like. But having made that token attempt at liking it, I shall from now on be relentlessly negative.
This Goodreads review says most of what I would say; so I'll assume you've read that.
Philosophically, if the book has anything to say, it is that we are apt, or likely, or might, be stopped by some unknowable wonder; and being unable to respond adequately, we would fail; and fall back upon ourselves (the aliens have done that, and grown us to face it, and the book unable to think of any good reaction ends with Character heading off into the wild, going yee-haw). This doesn't seem like a valuable idea. Unless it is a metaphor for people like Gray's reaction to Liberalism. But I think that kind of subtlety, or analysis, is beyond Our Author.
Another flaw is that the Female Character has to grow tired of her tank, and gets turned into a sparkly unicorn-butterfly princess, and flies off into the night. This too is both unimaginative and philosophically doubtful; the idea that life-of-the-mind is effectively valueless is a poor one.
A token plot hole that annoyed me: Another Character is a serial killer (for no particularly obvious reason; perhaps just to be edgy; perhaps it was fashionable then) and a physicist. But Our Author knowns nothing of physics or academia, so AC behaves as neither physicist or academic. He's also unsatisfactory as a serial killer: although the kills a NPC at a dinner party and leaves her to be found, the police don't even come to interview him. Ditto all his other murders. WTF? This is just carelessness; if your characters are going to kill people in nominally law-abiding present-day society they need to actually be in that society.
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