Review: Einstein in the Attic

Einstein in the Attic by Dana Dargos
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book via the author, all opinions are my own.

I thought this book was going to be a sci-fi adventure story based on the synopsis, which I was very excited to read. This compares itself to Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others which is one of my favorite short story collections. I was expecting a fast paced adventure, but the synopsis is a bit misleading. This is a philosophical story that I found neither fast paced or adventurous. I appreciated the conversation about evolution vs an intelligent designer (aka God or a religious deity), but I found that the book took too long to get to the actual debate.

This follow Adam Reemi, a professor who has struggles with the questions of "Is there a God?" or "as a man of science can I only believe in evolution?" Adam has seen and lived through things that would make the most devout question their faith and beliefs in a higher power and Adam's own questions have caused a rift between himself and his father who never waivered in his beliefs despite living through some very tough situations. Adam finds himself in a sticky situation in a professional debate debating the existence of an intelligent designer vs evolution to save his job and reputation. I feel like the debate portion of the book which happens at the very end and the parts where Adam and his entourage are researching the debate points were well done and interesting, however that doesn't occur until about the 50% mark through the end of the book. I wanted more of the science and religion debate, but much of this book was spent leading up to that.

I found it really hard to connect to this book. I didn't really connect with any of the characters and the writing style was not my taste. I think that there is definitely an audience for this book, but this is a case of I was expecting a sci-fi adventure story and this is more of a philosophical, self-discovery journey with some sci-fi. This book would be a great conversation starter and makes you think. The concept is certainly unique.

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