Antediluvian

by Wil McCarthy

What if all our legends are true? A rousing, fast-paced novel of time travel unlike any other, from acclaimed author Wil McCarthy.

DEEP DIVE

Before disaster erased the coastlines and river valleys of the Antediluvian age—before the mythic Flood—men and women struggled and innovated in a world of savage contrasts. It turns out that our legends of the Stone Age are even older than we think. It was a time when a world of archetypes and myths was written upon the fabric of humanity itself in the deepest way—a world that has only been preserved in the oldest stories with no way to actually visit it.

Until now.

In a brilliant and dangerous brain-hacking experiment, Harv Leonel and Tara Mukherjee are about to discover entire lifetimes of human memory coded in our genes, and reveal ancient legends—from knights and trolls to the birth of humanity itself—that are very real. And very deadly.

About
“. . . gripping and. . . grounded in archaeology.”— Publishers Weekly

“. . . plenty of verisimilitude. . .superbly intriguing and captivating. . . bravura historical recreations, full of conjectural material. . . . Presenting us with a colorful cast of characters from across the millennia who have thick and rich existences, and affirming that the cosmic stream of life flows forcefully despite all small blockades, McCarthy has written a novel that looks both forwards and backwards, thus making a stellar return to the field.”— Locus

Wil
"McCarthy is an entertaining, intelligent, amusing writer, with Heinlein's knack for breakneck plotting and, at the same time, Clarke's thoughtfulness."— Booklist

“‘Imagination really is the only limit.’”— The New York Times

“The future as McCarthy sees it is a wondrous place.”— Publishers Weekly

"A bright light on the SF horizon.”—David Brin

“Wil McCarthy demonstrates that he has a sharp intelligence, a galaxy-spanning imagination, and the solid scientific background to make it all work.”—Connie Willis

“In nearly every passage, we get another slice of the science of McCarthy’s construction, and a deeper sense of danger and foreboding... McCarthy develops considerable tension.”— San Diego Union-Tribune

“An ingenious yarn with challenging ideas, well-handled technical details, and plenty of twists and turns.”— Kirkus

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2019

About the author

Science fiction author and Chief Technology Officer for Galileo Shipyards


Engineer/Novelist/Journalist/Entrepreneur Wil McCarthy is a former contributing editor for WIRED magazine and science columnist for the SyFy channel (previously SciFi channel), where his popular "Lab Notes" column ran from 1999 through 2009. A lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Seiun, AnLab, Colorado Book, Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick awards, and contributed to projects that won a Webbie, an Eppie, a Game Developers' Choice Award, and a General Excellence National Magazine Award. In addition, his imaginary world of "P2", from the novel LOST IN TRANSMISSION, was rated one of the 10 best science fiction planets of all time by Discover magazine. His short fiction has graced the pages of magazines like Analog, Asimov's, WIRED, and SF Age, and his novels include the New York Times Notable BLOOM, Amazon.com "Best of Y2K" THE COLLAPSIUM (a national bestseller) and, most recently, TO CRUSH THE MOON. He has also written for TV, appeared on The History Channel and The Science Channel, and published nonfiction in half a dozen magazines, including WIRED, Discover, GQ, Popular Mechanics, IEEE Spectrum, and the Journal of Applied Polymer Science. Previously a flight controller for Lockheed Martin Space Launch Systems and later an engineering manager for Omnitech Robotics, McCarthy is now the president and Chief Technology Officer of RavenBrick LLC in Denver, CO, a developer of smart window technologies. He lives in Colorado with his family

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0⭐

I usually find Will McCarthy's books interesting, at the least. First off, he can write (always a plus, in my experience). Couple that with his superior imagination and scientific literacy and you get an original, well-above-average story. That's the case with this tale of armchair (actually orthodontist's chair) time travel.

Harv Leonel is an engineering professor who's invented a gadget to crack open the ancestral memories encoded in our DNA (Y chromosome, to be precise). Think of Willian Hurt in 'Altered States,' minus the flotation tank and the physical regression. Harv hooks himself up and suddenly he's the culture hero in some of humanity's fundamental myths: Noah's/Manu's ark; a sort of Neolithic King Arthur; Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden and the world's first ocean sailor. So instead of 'The Hero With A Thousand Faces' Harv is sort of the face with a thousand heroes.

Apart from being a ripping yarn, 'Antediluvian' is also a fun book: we meet the original troll under the bridge; there are echoes of Aragorn's pursuit of the orcs from 'The Two Towers' and there's a hint of Hemingway in the sailor story ('The Old, Old, Old, *Really* Old Man and the Sea'). McCarthy does his best to keep his stories within the bounds of current anthropology and archeology and there's a good appendix in which he outlines his thinking for the nitpickers among us (raises hand).

Personally I love it when authors and film makers take us back to our Neolithic origins, with works such as 'Quest For Fire,' 'Alpha,' 'Clan of the Cave Bear,' and the speculative sections of Brian Sykes' 'The Seven Daughters of Eve,' to name a few (I exclude 'One Million Years BC' for its scientific inexactitude, though I was an admirer at the time of Ms. Welch's dino hide bikini). This is a fine addition to the genre and an intelligent reworking of some primal myths. It also includes the best reason ever for dumping a guy. (MINOR SPOILER ALERT) Tara, Harv's research colleague and age-inappropriate girl friend (also the Cassandra of our tale) decides that she doesn't want children with Harv's gene for reckless adventuring. Who would?

It's a very good story, highly recommended. The cover's unfortunate, imho.

[reherrma · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.6| Ein sehr guter Roman mit einer wirklich überraschenden Spekulation, die das Thema Zeitreise in einem interessantem, neuen Aspekt beleuchtet. Der Autor verküpft diese Geschichte mit dem Genre der Paläo-SF, indem er Geschichten aus der tiefen Vergangenheit erzählt; aber der Reihe nach. Die beiden Forscher Harv Leonel und seine Assistentin Tara Mukerjee entwickeln eine theorethische Studie, in dem man das menschliche Y-Chromosom als Quanteninformations-Speicher benützt. Mit diesem "Quantom" will er die darin enthaltenen Informationen zugänglich machen, mithilfe eines Apparates, der diese Informationen in die Großhirnrinde einspeißt. Die beiden riskieren ein Experiment, bei dem Harv als Proband dient, mit dem man seine Erb-Informationen lesen will. Und wirklich, es funktioniert, Harv fällt in einen komatösen Zustand und reist mit den Erinnerungen seines Erbgutes in die tiefste Vergangenheit der menschlichen Evolution. Seine erste Geistreise führt ihn dabei rund 12.000 Jahre in die Vergangenheit, in eine Stadt, die man vor kurzem vor der Küste Indiens und Pakistans gefunden hat und wohl Teil der sog. Indus-Kultur war. In dieser Geistreise erzählt er von einem Kometeneinschlag und vom Beginn der Sinntflut. (Das Abschmelzen der Polkappen durch das Ende der Eiszeit). Im Körper und mit sämtlichem Wissen und Empfinden seines Gastgebers ausgestattet wacht er, als wohlhabender Seehändler dieser uns unbekannten Hochkultur, auf. Er lebt das Leben dieses Mannes bis zu dem Tag, als diese beiden Katastrophen die Flußlandschaft seiner Heimat heimsuchen. Einmal künstlich angestoßen setzen seine Quantonen auch ohne maschinelle Unterstützung weiteren Erinnerungen frei. Seine DNA führt ihn in die Zeit der Cro-Magnons ins Tal von Nog La, dann noch weiter in die Erdgeschichte zurück, wobei der Autor hier aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse und Spekulationen aufgreift und in seine Handlung einbaut.
Der Autor Wil McCarthy (von dem ich bisher nur in Zusammenhang mit seiner SOL-Trilogie gehört habe) macht das sehr geschickt. Statt unsere Zeitreisenden in persona durch die Zeit zu senden, nutzt er diese viel wahrscheinlicher erscheinende Möglichkeit, im Geist längst vergangene Epochen unserer Vorfahren mit zu erleben. Das kollektive genetische Ahnengedächtnis dient ihm als Vehikel, uns seine Versionen der Vergangenheit vorzustellen und mit der Jetztzeit des Romans zu verknüpfen. Seine Figuren – sowohl die in der Jetztzeit angesiedelten, wie auch die Menschen, in die unser „Zeitreisender“ schlüpft – sind überzeugend und vielschichtig gezeichnet. Das sind dann nicht etwa Menschen wie Du und Ich in unserer Gegenwart, die der Autor einfach in eine fiktive Vergangenheit versetzt hat, sondern Menschen die aus ihrer uns fremden Kultur heraus, aus ihren Überzeugungen und Wissen nachvollziehbar anders handeln.
Er belebt hier Mythen (Noah und die Sintflut, Adam & Eva, die Atlantis Hochzivilisation etc.) ebenso wie wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse, (die Begegnungen und Koexistenz mit Neanderthalern, Die Erfindung der Sprache und die Eroberung Europas durch den Homo Erectus etc.) er füllt sie mit Schicksalen und ermöglich uns, einen fiktiven Blick in eine faszinierende Vergangenheit zu werfen. Dabei sind diese Welten überzeugend ausgestaltet, die Figuren bewegen sich in ihnen stimmig und ermöglichen uns so einen zwar fiktiven aber dennoch wissenschaftlich überzeugenden Einblick in die Historie. Deshalb würde ich auch sagen, es ist ein Hard Science Roman allererster Güte.
Zum Ende des Buches hat der Autor noch seine archäologische Spekulationen mit wissenschaftlichen Fakten ergänzt, ich habe diesen Roman besonders wegen seiner historischen Spekulationen begeistert gelesen, aber auch die überzeugende Innovation über das Ahnengedächtnis des Y-Chromosoms als Quantenspeicher empfang ich als herausragend...

[Annarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intelligent, well written and thought provoking book that is also enjoyable and engrossing.
I think it's well written, with a well crafted plot and a fleshed out cast of characters.
It's not always an easy read and the pace is sometimes very slow.
All in all it was a good read.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[Henry Lazarus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wil McCarthy has a fascinating, but improbable way of looking at the Antediluvian (trade from Baen) or pre-history era. Harv Leonel and his team have discovered that the Y chromosome is a quantum storage device for human memory and that it can be accessed using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Harv, experimenting on himself, retrieves memories of four individuals. Starting with people escaping a flood with seven boats tied together, followed by people beset by trolls (Neanderthals), and two other earlier tales. There are a lot of good ideas here. Review printed by Philadelphia Free Press

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

*copy from the publisher*

Antediluvian is a standalone novel from Wil McCarthy, and I’ll say this: it’s imaginative work, and it tells a good story. You can pick it up and lose yourself in other times, other places, other people; the story is intriguing, and the characters have depth and weight. It reminds me, in a lot of ways, of the sci-fi tales of the seventies, boys-own adventures, which had the capacity to dazzle and amaze, and also to keep you turning pages past your bedtime. Like them, this story has its flaws, its problematic passages and conceptualisations, and doesn't always hit its mark, but also like them, it is ultimately a fun ride.

The big idea of Antediluvian, which I cannot promise not to misspell as we go through this review, is that genetic memory is real. That with enough budget, enthusiasm, and scientific knowhow, we can reach into that memory, and live the lives of our ancestors. See through their eyes. And here, I won’t lie, the book absolutely shines. The idea is a bit bonkers, of course. But taking it on its own terms lets us delve into other times, other places, to tell the stories of people so utterly unlike the modern reader, but also still wonderfully, recognisably human.
It's worth noting here that the science, as presented, feels only a few steps ahead of where we are now. That technically it feels plausible, even if the results might be open to question. McCarthy has clearly done the research, and made it into something accessible, something approachable something that helps drive a fascinating story.

McCarthy expertly melds myth and legend to bring us a set of stories which may not be true, but could be. From bronze-age hunters dealing with what they think of as trolls, to an Atlantean civilization swept away by a flood, from a garden of plenty to things far worse – these are the myths of the western world brought to life. Well, some of them anyway. But to life, nevertheless. I was particularly fond of the not-Atlanteans, a civilisation with complex astronomy, with a religious subtext we only see the edges of, with architecture and dreams of conquest, with currency, with families whom they care for. The art is in the way that these people are given viewpoints different enough from our own that they feel strange, but close enough that they feel almost familiar, second cousins, twice narratively removed. As one of the men whose eyes we look through argues with his mother-in law, with his brother, we can feel the pang of the domestic, even as we gasp at the soaring ziggurats, and shiver in anticipation of the encroaching waters.

The worlds that McCarthy spins from the tattered edge of myth are beautifully realised ones, within their perspective. Richly detailed, plausible, internally convincing. They’ll draw you in with their sights and sounds and smells, and you’ll care. You’ll see the struggles of the people, the conflicts, the deals, the internal agonies and the white-hot violence, and you’ll care. There’s so much to explore here, so much potential, and to be fair to the story, it gives you all sorts of different adventures in its time travelling tour of its narrator’s ancestry. I would’ve been delighted to explore further through the times and places, seen other worlds that are ours, through other, older eyes.

I did think that the focus on male perspectives was a bit of a shame. The story justifies it internally with a bit of sciencey handwaving, but it felt like a missed opportunity. In that regard, the text picks up some of the bad habits of its own ancestors – like not giving the women who are on the page enough to do. The biggest issue though, I found, was our interlocutor, the modern college professor whose Weird-Science-esque experiment drives the tale. His name is Harv, and he’s equal parts science action hero and unreconstructed sex-lizard. The rest of the story centres around its men, but it works, because those men are sympathetic characters, thoughtfully cast so that we can feel for them, empathise and sympathise even where we don’t agree. Harv I struggled with, perhaps because the old-school masculine style he embodies is a bit more problematic these days than when it graced the pages of Astounding and Asimov's.

Still, with that caveat, Antediluvian is a fun story. It’s snappy, and if you let it, it’ll pull you into its universe of time-travelling genetics, and you’ll have a good time. It has issues, yes, feeling like something of a throwback to an earlier time in genre history, and with that in mind, it’s probably not for everyone. Personally, I appreciate its ambition, many of its well-drawn characters, and its lush, vivid worldbuilding and so much of what it's trying to do, but can't help seeing the potential to realise that ambition more thoroughly. But like Marmite, some of you will be willing to look past the flaws, past the aggravating central character and the old-school all-boys-together focus, and will absolutely love it. If that sounds like you, then give this one a whirl. It has some great ideas, and with them, it reaches for the stars.

[Howard Brazee]

This book has a framing device of a scientist who is able to recover memories from ancestors that are encoded in "Y" chromosomes.

When he gets them, it's like living in them, with some of his current mind mixed with the memories more and more.

The first episode is with someone surviving a huge flood, mixing Indian and Judeo flood traditions. The others go further back in time. Wil describes those times (he picked interesting instances) well.

[Maurynne Maxwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good in its anthrocentric, patriarchal way. I had hoped for more imagination. I've always thought that ancestral, genetic memories explain sincere "past life" experiences better than reincarnation, so I was hoping for more than a riff on the "I was royalty" theme. Here, the protagonist is the first inventive guy, all the way back to homo sapiens direct ancestor. There's a lot of casual sex and men invented everything and boss everyone. (Of course, in his notes, the author admits that his sample of women is limited to one; he appears to be sincere in his he-man attitudes.)
One of the themes I really appreciated is the author's realization and insistence that there never were "cavemen", just different kinds of people, but I hoped he would be able to extend that concept in his exploration of evolution--that's where the anthrocentric comment comes in. There is no scientific evidence, only human insistence, that evolution means "better", not "different." In fact, evolution is adaptation to the environment, and humans are not at the top of a totem pole of language or cognition or adaptation.
Anyway, it is a cracking good story, which I believe is what the author set out to write, and not the deep and lengthy tome that this reader would prefer. And the historical basis is explained very well, and is at the forefront of currently accepted anthropology and archaeology, which remains very biased towards celebrating the male. One does have to wonder why genetic memory would be encoded in a Y chromosome and *not* an X chromosome...

[Jürgen Seibold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Die Coverbeschreibung des Verlages ist natürlich als Teaser gedacht - einige wenige Zeilen, um den potenziellen Käufer davon zu überzeugen, dieses Buch mit zur Kasse zu nehmen. Gut, dennoch sollte sie in etwa widerspiegeln, worum es im Buch geht. Bis auf den letzten Satz mit den Genen stimmt nämlich nur partiell der Inhalt der Beschreibung mit dem Inhalt des Buches überein. 
Richtig ist, dass die beiden eine bahnbrechende Erfindung gemacht haben und Harv dadurch gedanklich in die Vergangenheit reisen kann, beziehungsweise sein Y-Chromosom die frühen Erlebnisse immer noch in den Tiefen gespeichert hat und Harv diese nun technisch hervorzuholen in der Lage ist.
Er selbst liegt weggetreten im Universitätsgebäude - was seine Erlebnisse geistiger Art jedoch nicht schmälert. Wil McCarthy baut diese Erlebnisse als separat wirkende Geschichten auf und hält sich dabei so gut wie möglich an historische beziehungsweise mystische Bewandtnisse. Da die Erlebnisse mehrere Jahrtausende hinter uns liegen, lässt sich deren Wahrheitsgehalt nicht widerlegen und könnte sich exakt so dargestellt haben.
Das Interessante dabei ist der Umstand, dass McCarthy insgesamt vier Mal Harv in die Vergangenheit schickt und dabei uns zum Beobachter von Geschehnissen macht, die überwiegend Auswirkungen in unsere Zeit haben und auch weiterhin im Rahmen von Sagen, Erzählungen und religiösen Mythen ihre Daseinsberechtigung haben. Wir treffen auf den Grund, wie und warum Menschen auf einer Art Arche das Weite vor einer Sintflut gesucht haben, wie Eva von der Schlange gebissen wurde und was es mit Trollen und dem ersten Seefahrer aller Zeiten auf sich hat.
Der gesamte Roman ist sehr ideenreich aufgebaut und steht und fällt mit der jeweiligen Geschichte in der Geschichte. Während die Flucht vor der Sintflut als erste Geschichte bereits durch ihre doch recht gut aufgebaute Spannungselemente ein grandiosen Zeichen für den Einstieg in dieses Werk setzen konnte, fällt dies sogleich mit der zweiten wieder ein wenig ab. Hier hätte Wil McCarthy unter Umständen etwas weniger Historie und dafür mehr spannende Elemente einbauen könnte, was der Geschichte in ihrer Gesamtheit sicherlich gut getan hätte. Nichts desto trotz bleibt der Plot interessant und etabliert eine interessante Zeitreise-Alternative, die gänzlich ohne die üblichen Paradoxien aufwarten kann - man ist ja nur Beobachter aufgrund der gespeicherten Informationen der eigenen Gene. Somit lässt sich auch nicht gezielt reisen sondern nur auf Basis der eigenen Herkunft. Allein dies würde mir schon richtig viel Freude bereiten, vor allem weil man dabei im Gegensatz zu anderen Zeitreisewerken kein örtliches Risiko eingehen muss. 
ZEITFLUT ist interessant, zeugt von einer grandiosen Idee und lässt sich sehr schön lesen. Die Spannungsschraube hätte McCarthy noch deutlich anziehen können und beim Ende darüber hinaus noch etwas runder und nicht so hektisch agieren müssen. Dennoch ein abwechslungsreicher Plot mit historisch angehauchten Elementen, die teils mitreissen, teils nebensächlich wirken. In der Gänze somit ein ziemlich guter Unterhaltungsroman, der sich nicht in den üblichen Zeitreisen-Fahrwassern befindet.

hysterika.de / JMSeibold / 25.07.2021

[Ralph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ich bin hier doch sehr zwiegespalten (schwanke zwischen 2 und 3).
Das Thema an sich hat sehr grosse Potential. Allerdings ist es weder ein SF-Thriller noch ein Weltretter-Roman (wie er z. T. vom Verlag angepriesen wird).

Der SF-Teil des Romans wird in den ersten paar Seiten abgehandelt. Maschine->Magnetfelder->Aktivierung der Y-Chromosomen-Erinnerungen. Harv fällt in ein Koma und erlebt/erträumt die Erlebnisse eines seiner Vorfahren.
Das klingt noch ganz spannend und die erste Geschichte ist es auch.
Leider beginnt für mich jetzt das Abflachen des Romans. Nach dem ersten Koma, erwacht er wieder und wird in Abständen wieder hineingezogen (dem geneigte Perry Rhodan Leser drängen sich hier Atlans Erinnerungsschüben auf). Die Geschichten sind zwar interessant aber mässig spannend. Es bleibt leider unklar warum die Erinnerungen genau hier beginnen oder enden. Auch die Auswahl der Erinnerungen die durchlebt werden bleibt unklar. Nur wird deutlich, das man sich mit jeder Geschichte weiter zurück in der Zeit bewegt (jeweils mehrere 1000 Jahre).
In der realen Welt wird um das Leben Harvs gerungen. Zwischen den Komas ist Harv wach und kann kommunizieren aber die Lage scheint immer bedrohlicher zu werden, da die Ärzte nicht genau wissen, was zu tun ist.
Nach dem letzten Koma sagt Harv, das es jetzt vorbei ist und damit hat sich seine Gesundheit wieder stabilisiert...

Die Geschichten, die beschrieben werden, sind im Nachwort noch mit dem derzeitigen Stand der Wissenschaft begründet. Das war für mich nochmal sehr interessant. Die Erinnerungen hätten tatsächlich so passiert sein können. In einem anderen Rahmen hätte mir das sicher gefallen, aber als SF-Roman...

[Chuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was kind of weird, a frame story with memory based time travel and some strange character relationships going on in it, plus 3 (or maybe 4?) pre-historic settings. The history is well researched. I didn't quite enjoy the stories as much as McCarthy's future SF stories but the prose flows fairly well for an SF novel. A long afterword discusses some of the research that went in to the novel.

[Jim Desmond's · Rating 5 out of 5]

McCarthy's novel is placed in the tantalizing crossroads of archeology, neuroscience, and fiction narrative. The vignettes that he weaves together are all placed in identifiable moments in human evolution and early civilizations, but the wonderful part is seeing how he blows life into characters from those pasts. By turns action-packed and nuanced, his detailed depictions of human societies bring the past to life in ways that I've never experienced with other authors.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever concept.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great and creative narrative. Need to check out more from Wil.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time travel via one's genome makes for a very interesting read.

[John Winkler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imaginative

An adept intermingling of fact and interpretation, this story is very thought provoking and challenges some of our beliefs. All in all it is a good read!

[Michel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zeitreisen Mal anders! Sehr unterhaltsam und, mit den Nachworten versehen, wirklich interessant!

[Michael Rutkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book with a different idea behind it ! Not the same old spaceships and aliens ! A great change of pace and very interesting and intriguing !

[Daniel Bensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An electrical engineer teams up with his biologist girlfriend to zap his hypothalamus full of the ancestral memories encoded in his Y-chromosome DNA. Turns out his personality is inherited, and his forefathers also had more bravery than sense. This book is really a collection of short stories, and some were better than others. The tone vacillated between interesting and silly, and I wish it delved deeper.

[Stephan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antediluvian starts with the premise that the memory of humans is inscribed on the Y-chromosome, and is passed on through the generations. A small team of scientists manages to read this history and directly write it to the hippocampus of the principal researcher - leading to the head scientist experiencing a number of key episodes from pre-history. The retelling of these episodes forms the meat of the novel, framed with a thin present-day story.

I'm a bit of a mixed mind about the book. On the one hand, it was entertaining enough and an easy and quick read. On the other hand, it fell into a kind of uncanny valley for me. The physics/biology of the framing story was a bit too implausible to be believable even as the one free premise every SF author gets. And in the prehistorical episodes, too much was literary invention to feel real - the events were in themselves not implausible, but the details felt too constructed. And I always had the nagging feeling that the author was trying to make a deeper point, but failed to get it across.

The book ends with an afterword in which the author discusses the factual basis of the various episodes. I'm a geek, and I appreciate this - so that's half a star for me, bringing it to 3.5 rounded up. But overall, it's another book that is entertaining, but not really necessary.