The Crystal World

I followed up reading Ballard's The Drowning World with this book,and can see many similarities - the downbeat tone;the hero almost completely cut off from society,detached and without real relationships;the oblique likenesses to themes in Conrad's Heart of Darkness;elaborate descriptions of the landscape,inadequate depictions of characters; a rather token use of SF tropes used only to bear the freight of Ballard's dark pessimism.

I thought Ballard became over-enamoured with his vision of the petrified forest.There are only so many ways to say every living thing in the forest is being progressively turned to crystal. Very little happens really,people wander about the jungle at random..I didnt find people's motives very credible either.All in all a disappointment,and I couldnt raise a tear when ,like in The Drowned World,our hero with a death wish,however romantic in theory,went off to seek oblivion.I'm afraid existential ennui is so not my cup of tea,and the whole scientific(?) explanations of time''leaking'' away from the universe,leaving all creations left in a frozen stasis forever was way over my poor head.