Spin

by Robert Charles Wilson

Blurb from the book:

The time is the day after tomorrow, and three adolescents - Diane and Jason Lawton, twins, and their best friend, Tyler Dupree - are out stargazing. Thus they witness the erection of a planet-spanning shield around the globe, blocking out the universe. Spin chronicles the next 30-odd years in the lives of the trio, during which 300 billion years will pass outside the shield, thanks to an engineered time discontinuity.

I was really excited when this book came out because it sounded like an interesting premise and it got such great reviews. Then it won the Hugo for Best Novel and the Seiun Award (Japan’s Science Fiction Award) for Best Foreign Language Novel. I was so convinced I would love this that I got a paper back version as well as an ebook version from Tor’s new website. It has obviously taken me a while to get around to reading it and I must confess that I wasn’t that impressed. I didn’t dislike it but when it ended without a real ending I was not inclined to rush out and get the next book, Axis. I think the main issue I had was that while I found the concept and the scientific ideas interesting the book seemed more focused on the three characters. While normally that could be a good thing, I didn’t find these characters very well developed or compelling and I didn’t really care what happened to them. Obviously many people loved it (68 five star reviews on Amazon) but it just didn’t do it for me.