Plot: 2/9. A reclusive poet saved the Earth. But this story could serve as the best example of bad writing.

• Half of the article described the protagonist’s life tediously and ostentatiously like an AI in real life.
• The crisis came out without any proper sense of danger for readers barring a minor annoyance from the poet.
• The introduction of the danger was given tediously from people in a spaceship just escaped from the robots on Earth. But how could it possible for them to escape from the robots who could blast the moon? Why did robots just catch them if they are so powerful?
• The antagonist was so weak that it was defeated immediately, which dwarfed the ability of the Earth but unable to show the protagonist’s ability.

Core: 0/9. Sorry, I can sense nothing special except Merritt’s biggest ego against everything in the world. For example, it’s ridiculous that robots couldn’t create the art if it could control the government. In addition, why was the protagonist called the last poet?

Character: 2/9. All the characters were created for the protagonist only. He’s the egocentric God in this egotistical story. Things would be more interesting if Lao was not such a submissive Chinese.

World and Others: 1/9. The structure of the society was absolutely unrealistic nonsense, let alone technology here was merely magic.

Overall: 1/9. Why did Vandermeer put a plausible science-fiction that was a part of a round-robin novel here? Meanwhile, it’s hard for me to imagine this nasty work was derived from a 50-year-old journalist.