PositiveThe Boston Review... from the first stories he published, Chiang established a style of storytelling that is his alone ... In science fiction (SF)—which is what Chiang writes, though sometimes just barely—the science-fictional things are what bear the meaning and produce the emotional force of the story, and Chiang’s science-fictional things are like no other writers’, even when they turn on much-used (and abused) concepts such as quantum mechanics, time reversals, or alien contact ... Chiang’s SF differs from most SF in many ways, but the most striking—and pleasing—difference is that there are almost no villains in his stories.
John Banville
RaveThe Washington PostThe relentless examination of the self amid ghastly or comically lively surroundings has long been a force in Banville's novels about divided, self-loathing men...Max can't be classed with them. He isn't worse than most men, as Banville's men usually are; his sins are common ones, though maybe not venial. He pays close attention to everything but the most important things, and he grants himself slack that he feels is paid for by his bleak self-contempt, though of course it isn't. Without that near-psychotic division at work in Banville's other characters, the animated world in this book seems to have been built up for its own sake … Max recounts with impossible exactness the passing of that summer and his own sensations of remembering.
