When I picked the Science Fiction module for my university course, I was hoping that I would be reading some brilliant novels that I could really get stuck into. I did not think that one of them would be about monks and would span hundreds of centuries and that it would bore me to death. There were obviously a couple of redeeming qualities otherwise I wouldn’t have given it 1.5 stars, but it was just a complete yawn-fest.

In a barbarous and fallen world, the monks of the Order of Leibowitz inherit the sacred relics and spend their lives copying, illuminating and interpreting the holy fragments. They vow to preserve ancient knowledge, but will man learn from his mistakes or will history repeat itself?

The synopsis that I’ve taken from Goodreads doesn’t really give you that much information about what the book is about, so let me try and sum it up for you as best as I can:

The novel is broken up in to 3 different sections with each section taking place about 500/600 years apart. The first section is set in the 26th century, it’s post WWIII, civilisation has collapsed and society doesn’t keep track of it’s heritage. So it’s left to a few monasteries who track the history of civilisation and safeguard human knowledge.

 

“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”

― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

 

Then we move onto the section section which is set in the 32nd century, and it shows that humanity is slowly learning what they did wrong and are trying to learn from their previous mistakes. This section also deals with science vs religion.

Then last but not least, we have the third and final section which takes place in the 38th century where Miller shows the reader that humanity has finally progressed to the stage it was at when the nuclear war happened. Humanity has technology and knowledge but then… we are also on the brink of ANOTHER nuclear war. Yay.

So basically, the message of the story is that humanity never learns from its mistakes and we’re basically doomed.

Now that you know more about the story, onto the proper review, which is going to be short and sweet.

This book honestly bored me so much. It took Miller 5 pages to say what could have been said in a few sentences which meant that it was such a long-winded reading experience. I definitely understand why it was chosen for a science fiction course though because of the different elements of the world and society that the book explored, but I just couldn’t enjoy most of it. I think the bit that I liked the most about the book was the last section, because you could really see humanity make the same mistakes as they did in the first section, and they wanted technological progress so much that it detrimental humanities progress in itself. So that was interesting to see…

 

“Soon the sun will set’- is that prophecy? No, it’s merely an assertion of faith in the consistency of events.”

― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

 

I think the biggest problem for me was that I’m not a religious person, so in the first 2 sections of the book, there was a lot of religious language being used, and I had to keep looking up what each word meant, which made the reading experience very stop-start which got a bit annoying. I know that I’m meant to enjoy learning new words, but when it comes to books that rely heavily on religion, I tend to switch off because I just can’t connect with it.

Overall, this book is one that I know that I’m definitely NOT going to read again. I hadn’t even heard of it before I took the SF module. There IS actually a second book, but I think that it’s safe to say that I won’t be reading that one.

A Canticle for Leibowitz DOES have a very interesting premise though and I know that a ton on Goodreads have really enjoyed this book. But unfortunately, it just wasn’t for me.

 

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