Cheap Mysterium (Book) (ROBERT C. WILSON) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Mysterium

Full of Ideas
Mysterium was a bit of an unusal book in that I found the majority of the characters to be extremely rich and vividly drawn for such a short book (similar to many of Orson Scott Card's characters)...but I found the overall plot to be somewhat shallow, almost like the book needed another 100-150 pages to fully flesh out the storyline (unlike Card...who also tends to write shorter books, but most of his feel more "fleshy"). This being said, I rather enjoyed Mysterium. Especially, Wilson's tendency in the book to try and cram a lot of ideas into a small space (even if he doesn't always succeed). Wilson covers everything from Gnostic Christianity to theories on the origin of the Universe. He then links all of his ideas with a thread that at times seems somewhat tenuous, but not so much so that it does not get one "pondering the imponderables" about the nature of our existence. Are we the dreamers or are we part of someone else's dream? This was (roughly) a question posed by Shakespeare in one of his plays...at least I think it was Shakespeare. But whomever said it, the question seems very apropos to the heart of this book. Mysterium is the first work of Wilson's that I've read and even though the story itself could have been a bit better written, Wilson's ideas were extremely intriguing...I look forward to reading more of his work.

---

Interesting story, well written
After reading BIOS by Wilson, I wanted to find more from him because I liked his writing. Mysterium was as good as I had hoped.

The plot was well developed and the characters were interesting. Also, as I found in BIOS, Wilson is very good at letting you get important information about the setting through the plot instead of having to explicitly describe things. I also liked that the author at least made mention at the beginning of the book about how the world that was left behind reacted to the disappearance of the town. In other similar stories I've read, I've wondered about this, but it was never addressed.

One thing that I think could have made this book better was if the author had written more about the town and the characters before the event took place. I think this would have given the reader a better idea about who the characters were before this happened to them. Something like what Stephen King did so well in The Stand.

In any case, I enjoyed Mysterium and would recommend it. I will continue to look for more from Wilson in the future.

---

A Great Read!
This book is great. Well realized characters, a very interesting story-line that poses some interesting questions. The books ending will have you on the edge of your seat. The parallel world is brought vividly to life. My only quibble with the book was that there seemed to be so much of the story compressed into just a few pages. The book's timeline skips a few months, and some explanations. Aside from that I'd recommend this to anyone looking for something interesting and thought provoking.