#3: The Sirens of Titan

One of the books on my 2016 Reading Challenge is a satirical novel.  I mentioned this to Levi and he suggested I try another Kurt Vonnegut book.  After looking at every book we own by Vonnegut, I was debating between Breakfast of Champions and The Sirens of Titan.  Levi told me The Sirens of Titan is one of his favorites and Mason also said it was good, so I chose it.

The Sirens of Titan is a book about space travel, time travel, aliens, relationships, and religion.  The main characters in the book are Malachi Constant/Unk and Winston Niles Rumfoord.  Throughout the book we learn about Malachi's life; parents, money, troubles, etc.  We first introduced to Malachi and Winston very early in the book.  Winston has the power to see into the future, read people's minds, and materialize between Earth, Mars, and other places in space.  Winston tells Malachi that he sees him living on Titan in the future.  He does not give any other details about how Malachi will end up on Titan.

Malachi has a lot of hardships on Earth and is known as a greedy money hungry womanizer (or something like that).  We are later introduced to him as Unk on Mars.  His life on Mars is much different than his life on Earth.  He has even more troubles as Unk.

It's hard to really describe the rest of this story without giving out too many spoilers.  I did feel sorry for the character of Malachi/Unk throughout the book.  The character of Winston was hard for me.  I was torn between whether he was supposed to be a bad guy or good guy.  I guess I still am after reading the book.

This book was better than the other Vonnegut books I read, but still isn't really my type of book.  I'm sure for people who like this kind of book it is great.  I give it 3 1/2 stars.

Up Next:  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie