When I first read the premise of Vagabonds, I was intrigued immediately. While I did enjoy reading this book, it was quite different than what I expected. The book spent the majority of the time mediating on different philosophical issues. Mostly the ideas of capitalism and consumerism versus the ideals of a more communist or socialist society. The author did a fantastic job thoroughly explaining the ideas that were being discussed. The setting of the story felt underutilized. I love when books use fantastical settings to talk about real world problems in clever ways. In Vagabonds, the setting and most of the action of the book felt secondary to the ideas being discussed.
The book did not contain much action, apart from about the last 80 pages and I felt that much of the middle section of the book could have been removed without much change to the book. For the book to be 600 pages, I did expect more than just many conversations to happen. I thought that in many situations, the characters found information or arrived at an answer to a problem too easily. Apart from literally changing the function of society, no problem seemed to last for more than a few pages. The challenges for the characters were mostly mental and were solved quite quickly. The events that Hans, Garcia, Ronen, and Galiman were involved in leading up to the current Martian society fascinated me and I would have loved to learn more about. My favorite passage in the book was during Hans's chapter at the end when he ruminated on his life and accomplishments. His character fascinated me. I also would have loved to have seen more of Eko.
The book did not contain much action, apart from about the last 80 pages and I felt that much of the middle section of the book could have been removed without much change to the book. For the book to be 600 pages, I did expect more than just many conversations to happen. I thought that in many situations, the characters found information or arrived at an answer to a problem too easily. Apart from literally changing the function of society, no problem seemed to last for more than a few pages. The challenges for the characters were mostly mental and were solved quite quickly. The events that Hans, Garcia, Ronen, and Galiman were involved in leading up to the current Martian society fascinated me and I would have loved to learn more about. My favorite passage in the book was during Hans's chapter at the end when he ruminated on his life and accomplishments. His character fascinated me. I also would have loved to have seen more of Eko.