Four humans are sent on a four-year mission to travel into deep space aboard an AI ship. Their mission is to help win the war against an alien race that had previously killed one of their exploratory groups.
Providence was my book club’s latest pick. A lot of us had the same reaction to the book – that it was okay, but a bit weird.
I’m trying to think about how to describe the plot of this book but my problem is that, in my opinion, nothing really happens. The astronauts travel in space aboard an AI ship that goes around looking for aliens, which it then engages with and kills. The astronauts don’t really do anything, other than monitor the ship. And even then, the ship is capable of repairing itself so I’m not sure the purpose of the astronauts in the first place.
I guess I kept waiting for something more to happen and it never did. I think the book touches on some interesting ideas but they didn’t really go anywhere and I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. The characters were okay; I think they could have been fleshed out a bit more. Even though we get chapters from each character’s point of view, they didn’t tell us much about the characters or why we should care about them. Plus, I didn’t really like one of the characters and I was annoyed at how her character arc ended in the book.
I haven’t read any other of Max Barry’s books but if they are all like Providence, I don’t think I’m interested in reading more.
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