Slaughterhouse-Five is about Billy Pilgrim and his journey through WWII and through time. One day, he’s abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians who take him to Tralfamadore, their home planet where Billy is kept in a zoo. He’s constantly traveling through time, only spending part of the book in the zoo, and while he’s time-traveling he experiences the bombing of the German city of Dresden. This part of the story is based on an experience the author had himself, as he was kept as a prisoner of war there.
As you might be able to tell from my summary, this story can be a bit disjointed due to all the time travel constantly happening. Nearly every chapter, Billy wakes up somewhere else at another time and there aren’t really any rules to how it works. The book also spends a lot of time describing things that aren’t very important or don’t really contribute to the narrative. This is a major factor contributing to another problem: this book fails to build up some weight behind its plot. Events just happen and that’s it, which is a unique thing about this book and while it’s not necessarily bad, certain events should have more weight than others.
There are good parts, however. This book has a lot of interesting ideas and characters, like the man who’s a living navy seal copypasta, and the person who’s written about 200 sci-fi novels. The different characters are one of the better parts of this book since they’re all fairly well written and interesting. While this story spends too long on unimportant things that don’t contribute much to the plot, it never dwells on any specific event for too long, yet at the same time the entire story revolves around Dresden. However, the most interesting thing about this book, like I said above, is how things just happen. There’s no flowery language, everything is in plain English. The story doesn’t hesitate to do anything and there’s almost a laid-back feel to it with an undertone. This informal style also fits well with how everything feels a bit disjointed at times.
Considering the unique ideas this story has to offer, and its shortcomings, I can say this is an example of sci-fi that sticks out. It doesn’t rely on an interesting setting or being a thriller, but on its characters and unique storytelling to make a good novel. I give it a 3/5.
-Ben
I have heard about this book and was thinking about reading it for my banned book project. I read Huckleberry Finn instead, but I thought the title or slaughterhouse five sounded pretty cool anyways. From your summary, the book also seems rather interesting, especially the characters. I really like your summary because I think I get a good idea of the flow of the book. Overall, great post!
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