The story itself contained within Kethani is quite good, all things considered. My issue with this book was the rather jarring constant switch of first person perspectives between the main characters. This made it difficult to follow and the character's story arcs were fairly mundane. I almost put this book down a few times, but decided to stick with it. I could see the ending a mile away, and it left open a few unexplained story elements that would have been more interesting than what was provi...

I liked this book and the ideas it brings. It isn't perfect but it works for me somehow, though feels a bit thin in places. I've re-read it a couple of times and got to know it a bit more.It starts off in the real and is grounded there, yet takes you off and away, following the central premise to the novel. Not hard to read or get your head round, it's running with the possibility of coping with years and years of an extended life. To say any more would give the story away and spoil it.No, it's

Nooooo, I was fooled by the nice synopsis. It drags on and on with the different characters soulsearching and I couldnt help but thinking why all this useless speculating? The answer was so simple. At the end the story just fizzles out to nothing.It tries drama with a sci-fi setting but fails to tell the drama and the the sci-fi sucks.I feel sorry for readers who enjoyed this.

This book is a slow burn that leads to a profound ending that brought me to tears. The years later and I still think about it regularly.

A low-key post-disaster novel where the disaster really isn't one, a bit like a murder mystery where there is no murder ... but even there there can be a mystery, and here there is a sufficiency of character and incident, even too many narrative viewpoints I felt. The continuing mystery of the Kethani themselves - what do they want, why are they doing this, what do they look like - is unsolved and there is even a hint at a secondary plot regarding Kethani 'spies' among us who only seem to be hum...

I have thrown this book across the room half a dozen times in frustration. The characters are nothing more than stereotypical cardboard cut-outs with whom I can find no way to sympathize (despite enormous personal tragedies, at times). The prose is uninspiring and falls flat far more often than not. Franky, there are times that I'm flabbergasted with how terrible the writing is. The plot is only rarely engaging. Eric Brown manages to take the most optimisitc, sickeningly sweet view of how humani...

Another great read by Eric Brown. He's quickly become one of my favorite authors. It was a little bit of a slow start and I was even thinking about quitting on it but I decided to give it a few more pages and I'm so glad that I did. It's not action packed or anything but just really great and engaging stories... I felt invested in the characters' lives. I don't want to give any of the story away but, it was unexpected and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Easy read, well paced. A hopeful look at first contact that is definitely refreshing.

The premise and the opening chapter engaged me. The focus on ordinary people of rural Britain would be good. I like books where the protagonist(s) is someone like me (except I'm not British). I appreciated how the concept of being resurrected as often as necessary affected species-long assumptions and supposed limitations. However, I feel about this book like I did after viewing the last episodes of the ABC series "Lost". I felt that I had been provoked to think differently about some things, bu...

I'm a sucker for stories about benevolent aliens (Clarke's Childhood's End is one of my favorites, and I also enjoyed Brown's other novel The Serene Invasion). This one also includes some interesting thoughts on death and the possibility of immortality. There are a few things that didn't work for me, but overall I really enjoyed this one.I've read some of Brown's other work, and he strikes me as a readable, philosophically interesting SF writer--not quite Le Guin levels of genius, but maybe some...

Having read this before (October 2018) I enjoyed it as much as first time around. A first contact novel and what happens as a result of this friendly visit, told by several of the characters who are all regulars in a local country pub. The main character tells one of the stories, as well as the opening links for each tale. An uplifting novel with only one unbelievable aspect. No way are they getting a very snowy winter every year (tongue slightly in cheek here).

I found this strangely uplifting. Some of the criticisms of this first contact novel is how it concentrates on a small village in Yorkshire. That aspect is what makes this tale work. Immortality is now available and it takes the residents of the village to tell us stories of how individuals have been affected by this. A very satisfying read.Ray Smillie

The cover blurb says this book is "a future classic" and I have to say "Meh" to that. This book is interesting and I enjoyed it, but unlike many other books I've read, I have zero interest in ever reading Kethani again. I think that perhaps my opinion is flawed by a liking for the more action-oriented stories rather than this slower-moving tale where very little overtly happens. It's a psychological study more than anything else, a study in first person by a group of people who are alive during

3.5 stars; or about a 6 or 7/10 (I remain vexed that goodreads does not allow half star options! Oh well). It was slow and perhaps a little heavy-handed at times, but it's episodic, loosely-connected short stories is unique in a sci-fi, and it's moral and philosophical questions it brings are interesting to ponder. Overall a decent read; not earth-shatteringly good or groundbreaking, but not a waste of shelf space either.

Good buildup, asks some interesting questions, and yet fails to deliver as a narrative by the end. Still worth the read.

imagine you've just had the great idea to make an alien-invasion film with your mates; you've got no money for script, lighting, special effects, location, wages ... in fact all you've got is 25 years to waste shooting anecdotal footage in your local pub drinking pints of liver-rot and one blurry hand-held shot of an inverted icicle close to the camera overlooking a snow-covered landscape.that's this book.432 pages of NOTHING HAPPENS, in a classical narrative sense - it's an un-book, less-than-s...

Repetitive relationship drama with aliens thrown in.

This turned out to be a British literary / thoughtful / philosophical work about alien invasion.Quite enjoyable, but not really moreish…

I liked this book. I found the milieu and characters fairly real to life, although I agree with other reviewers that the depth of the characters is much wanting. The book is basically a bunch of short stories containing the same core fixtures published over a 10-year period in various magazines. This causes the story to loose much of its continuity as it instead amounts to a series of incidents that are more or less adroitly stitched together via the 'interlude' chapters. A bit more engaged reda...

I'm not much of a SF reader. I've always maintained I didn't do SF, until I started reading my husband's Kris Longknife books and loved them. Since then I've been trying to expand my reading and try more SF. After reading Mark's reviews of Eric Brown's books over at Walker of Worlds, I really wanted to try his books and having read Cara's review of Kéthani over at Speculative Book Review, that seemed a good place to start. And if Kéthani is anything to go by, I think I need to read more of Brown...