Told with deadpan humour
and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut’s cult tale of global destruction preys
on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still,
surviving it ...
Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding ‘fathers’ of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he is the inventor of ‘ice-nine’, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker’s three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker’s Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to mankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh ... |
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.”
Um. Good (sort-of), but weird, and not always “good-weird.”
Blending science and morality, religion with warning, weapons and the man’s desire to create and destroy, it’s a powerful satirical novel that works in some levels and loses me on others. Nothing new for me, I’m sad to say. Damn impatience trait.
Jonah aims to write about the now-dead scientist who is credited for being a creator of a bomb – he pairs up with the three odd children left behind from the man, and they voyage to a new place that holds a weird and quirky religion, Bokononism.
I know Bokononism was created and employed to give more message regarding religion, but it was so annoying. My least favorite aspect of the book. The humor fell flat with me with the religious stuff, but the humor DID work with the unique characters and how they interacted with each other.
The author kind of overindulges in some ways and the story seems to struggle with rambling. When they get to the island it doesn’t get much better, although the ending was one of the strongest parts.
The writing is creative and I get there is plenty of message here, but the execution to bring the message alive doesn’t work consistently. I got tired of some of the stuff being too out there and satirical half the time, while the other half I ended up enjoying and admiring the effort.
Book Quotes:
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
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