I LOVE Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi action movie Children of Men. I’ve watched maybe six times and every time, the ending always almost brings me to tears. So when I learned it was adapted from P.D. James’ book of the same name, it was a no-brainer deciding what my next book would be.
After finishing the book, it wasn’t difficult to reach to the conclusion that I enjoyed the movie better.
While James’ book gives a more in-depth look at how human infertility and humanity’s slow death march towards extinction affects the sexual dynamic between men and women and almost demented ways humans try to cope with a world without children or a race of dead men walking, I feel the book dedicates WAY too much time describing the failing of human civilization and the Regrets and guilt of Theo Faron. It’s not even until after 2/3 through the book where it feels like the plot and story are properly paced and stuff of consequence actually begin to happen.
The film’s adaptation by, comparison, feels consistent in its pacing and the world building and woe-is-mes of Theo feel more compact a take up less of the audience’s time.
What books do you feel were worse than its film adaptation and why?
I was so disappointed with the Terror-- I couldn't put it down up until near the end with Crozier and Silna and going into the details of their life together-- ewwwwww.
I was already really uncomfortable with how Silna was handled, especially because in real life, its well documented how much sexual violence native women face compared to other demographics, so having a very young girl be constantly half naked was already pretty uncomfortable, but then the end just took it to 11.
Idk, cutting the romance and sexualization of Silna's character and aging her up was one of the best decisions they made.
It's a shame too, because some parts of the book are so well done-- like, I had never realized how fucking awful scurvy is and what it does, or how deadly artic voyaging was. It's clearly well researched, and there are some points that had me so stressed, but I can't recommend it because of how much the bad outweighs the good and the damn ending.
I don't know if you are familiar with Dan Simmons other work but he tends to have a self insert character that has lots of sexy sex with very sexy women.
The Terror is one of his better ones with the historic backdrop toning down his usual tropes imo. It's still creeps back in though, he just can't help himself :(
Dan Simmons is really hit or miss with me, he's written some books that I love, like the first two Hyperion novels, and some I hated, like the rest of the Hyperion novels.
Thank you for putting this sentiment out there for me to readily agree with.