Leaps across the circuits that enable large language models and delivers a mind-blowing reflection on what it means to live on a dying planet reconceived by artificial intelligence ... Any disorientation will eventually melt into wonderment ... Compelling ... He writes without a drop of mawkishness about guilt and grief and the sorrow endemic to caring about the natural world ... Even with faith that its parts would at some point cohere, I wasn’t prepared for the astonishing resolution that Powers delivers.
Confident ... Told in two ways that feel by turns overlong and undercooked—until they add up to something unexpected and genuinely fascinating ... If this all sounds like fantasy fiction for rich white people, that’s because it is. I’m not being a crank here, whining again about how Powers falls short of the great American masters of marine-life metaphors. I’m pointing, in fact, to a revelation near the very end of the novel, which discloses its stunning conceit ... Ingenious tricks and clever devices abound in Powers’s fiction, but never before with the provocative implications of the turn in Playground.
An enchanting entry point to his work that swings open easily with just a few creaks ... We have thankfully emerged from the season of the so-called beach read. But Playground, whose interpersonal drama is a little soapy, actually would make a great one. What we consider to be the ocean, that we so blithely treat as our swimming pool, is after all just the continental shelf — the tip of the melting iceberg.
Powers’s evocations of the creatures in the deep, alas, don’t always dazzle with novelty ... All this is an appealingly romantic vision, but ultimately a limited one.
Frontloaded with a lot of information in its opening chapters, this meaty novel starts slowly and confusingly. But rest assured that the stories about Powers' trio of exceptional outliers come together gradually ... As usual, Powers' descriptions jump out of the water ... There are some audible creaks in the storytelling machinery as Powers labors to bring his multiple narrative strands together. Still, he manages to pull off a sly — and disturbing — twist in the novel's profoundly affecting climax.
Richly hued ... If it lacks the earlier book’s propulsion it nevertheless hits its ambitious marks ... Powers is renowned for his graceful melding of fiction and science; no author has done more to turn our gaze outward to the mysteries of the universe, above our heads and below our feet ... Best read with a dictionary handy ... Powers is renowned for his graceful melding of fiction and science; no author has done more to turn our gaze outward to the mysteries of the universe, above our heads and below our feet.
Initially, the novel is exhilarating. Powers is a vivid writer, and it can be intoxicating to get lost in his words ... As Playground develops, however, it becomes increasingly mired in its polarities ... The exploration never quite comes to full three-dimensional life ... Oddly unsatisfying.
If his new novel, Playground, is not one of his very best, it’s a pleasurable and prescient assemblage of his Greatest Hits ... An impressive and warm-hearted book. Maybe only I want more or different play from Richard Powers.
Cerebral ... at once a portrait of a three-way friendship, a cyberpunk thriller of sorts, an Anthropocene novel, an oceanic tale and an allegory of postcolonialism. It is as brilliant on land as it is undersea ... Disquieting ... That Powers is an outstanding writer is hardly news. But with Playground, he proves himself a wizard.
Undoubtedly timely ... Powers seems to be catering to the book-buying masses instead. Given the importance of his ecological message, it’s fair enough to seek a broader appeal, but we haven’t received any improvements in novelistic skills, such as characterisation and dialogue, in return. A twist visible from a nautical mile away fails to keep the plot afloat.
Involves multiple plot threads, expertly and precisely loomed ... Overlaid with some obvious symbolism ... If on the surface Powers’ approach can feel patronizing, at least in the ocean the sparkling feels earned. The finest parts of Playground revel in the surprising, magical life under water.
A transcendentalist deep dive of a novel ... What a lush, opaque world Powers conjures for us here ... Works best as a fabulous exploration ... Rambling, rapturous.
Rhapsodic with wonder, electric with cautionary facts and insights, Powers’ profound and involving novel illuminates the conundrums of human nature and the gravely endangered ocean deep.
Playground joins The Overstory as an important and innovative addition to the burgeoning genre of climate fiction, but it also parallels the earlier novel in suggesting that one reason human rule on earth might be coming to a close is that we could potentially be supplanted by artificial intelligences. The novel thus directly addresses two of the most pressing issues in today’s world, issues that bear on the very survival of the human race. The novel may be a warning of the potential disaster looming as a result of our treatment of the natural world as a mere playground for humans, but it is also an oddly cheerful paean...to the value of play in our attempts to define ourselves in relation to each other and the world ... If Playground thus contains echoes of much of Powers’s earlier writing, it also covers important new territory in its focus on the oceans, a particularly welcome contribution to a topic that has not been sufficiently explored in climate fiction.
A novel of spectacular thematic scope and surreal drama ... The author's genius shows in his formidable descriptive talents and the graceful clarity of his densely woven plot.
Along with its environmental warnings, the book carries an intriguing look at the ways people and animals play, as in the boys’ competitive chess, the antics of manta rays, the allure of computer games, and what a meta-minded author might do with his readers. An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.
