Generally speaking, I've been happier with Anthony's earlier works than with his later ones. It's just seemed to me that he had some good, mostly original ideas early in his career, and later on he's just kept going back the well again and again and again...

So I was pretty disappointed with Omnivore. The book was slow to get going even though it's very short. The characters never seemed properly developed to me. The big stunner at the end was so unsurprising to me that I had to go back and reread the whole section just to figure out what I missed. Then the correlations between our intrepid explorers and the Herb, Omni, and Carn on the fungus world seemed more than a little stretched...

I thought some of the social commentary was good. I actually have personally thought that moving construction underground is the way to go, so it was nice to see that Anthony (at least at one point) held the same views. Some of his takes on overpopulation was interesting... But other than that, there wasn't much depth to the story.

Read 4/2007 ( )