As someone who adores and has reread the MArs Trilogy multiple times, I'm so pleased that this exists. I will be rereading it for sure. I love the worldbuilding and the characters and just the whole thing makes me happy. ( )

I was forewarned that this book moves slowly, and I found that to be true. However, I was in a rare mood where that didn't bother me. My major take-away is that some themes were introduced and their implications left unexplored. (I can't say much more without straying into spoiler territory.) I most enjoyed the mega-engineering aspects of the story: colonizing the planets, moons, and asteroids throughout the Solar system. That's the sort of thing I fell in love with as a child of the Gemini/Apollo era. Robinson doesn't delve deep into the economic reasonableness of such activity, though, and the adult me thinks that is a bit of a cheat or sloppy oversight. If I were to recommend this book to a friend, I would include plenty of caveats and probably try to direct them to a similar book with better pacing. ( )

Overall: 5/10, Not worth the read.
2312 has a lot of really strong points. The diegesis (world) is extremely interesting, basically creating a very realistic look at colonizing our solar system and even its asteroids. All the politics and social challenges facing the solar system are clever and insightful, especially the socio-economic differences between the colonies and Earth. Lastly, intrapersonal identity is also explored, from gender to body modification and technological integration. However, all these brilliant components do not make engaging content.
The main problem with the book is its story and structure, making it mostly worthless. In fact, I would encourage the author to rewrite the entire thing. The story is a really boring account of a terrorist attack. 20% of the book is spent with two characters walking through a tunnel. The minor story arc about an Earthing the main character saves does not end up having enough relevance to justify its inclusion. The common scifi device of explaining facts about the world through quoted books from the period is used, but is also done so poorly that it makes all those pages worthless. In the end, a lot of good material is wasted and bad content is stuffed into a never-ending book. ( )

There will be no rating.

This book is a journey. There is a story too of course, but it is dissolved in the world this book walks in. And oh this world... there is no expression for it. It is transhuman but yet so close somehow, so really "what must be". This one is positive. Strange. Probably one of the most positive futures without been too bright.

I skipped a lot. A really really lot. There was too much words for me. But every time I've done that I catched a thought that it is because of easiness to feel and believe, because of knowing what it is already...

Really can't rate it. It's no use to rate someones future life.

This book is a slog and the main character, Swan, is not very likeable. I really wanted to like this book. This future world with terraformed planets, asteroid terrariums, and modified humans was fascinating but I felt the book went off on too many tangents describing the world and not enough focus on moving the plot forward. I struggled to remain engaged in the story and I’ve decided not to finish. Not a decision that comes lightly. I don’t abandon books no matter how predictable or poorly written because I’m usually driven to see how a book ends.

I gave 3 stars to be fair since I didn’t complete it. The writing is good but at the halfway point, I’ve read enough and don’t imagine the book will suddenly change style. ( )