Storyline: 3/5 
 Characters: 4/5 
 Writing Style: 2/5 
 World: 3/5 
 It only took the first few pages to decide that this book had real merit; it was going to be an idea book. By the end of three short chapters, it was clear that it was a really neat idea. I like idea books - ones that are surprisingly creative and have tantalizing possibilities. The idea alone can carry a book, as it tended to here. If the idea was the best part of this book, it was the writer's enthusiasm for his own story that is the weakest. It often read as if the author himself had trouble maintaining interest in the tale. I suspect that the first and second books of this were originally written as one book, that an editor made Farmer separate them for sales purposes, and Farmer was left having to add fluff to the first to make it long enough for a single novel. 
 In the science fiction trove there are other similar books that I've enjoyed: Niven's Ringworld, Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, and Scalzi's Old Man's War. To be ranked among those is indication of merit, and the idea behind the Riverworld is as good as any from those others. To Your Scattered Bodies Go does, however, have its demerits. In ways it showcases the worst from those other classics: like Ringworld, the plot carries forward with a trudging and oftentimes uninteresting momentum; like Clarke, Farmer is no literary genius and will never be mistaken for a wordsmith; and like Old Man's War, Riverworld seems to be capable of developing only one interesting character. Riverworld does bring something more than the idea, however. It doesn't mimic Niven's hard science; it looks amateurish in comparison to Clarke's handling wonder and mystery; and it is never as fun as Scalzi's old men. Yet Riverworld does bring forth a genuinely engaging and memorable character. 
 What makes our character so remarkable is that he really isn't that likeable. (view spoiler)[ He's somewhat racist, clearly ethnocentric, fairly misogynistic, arrogant, hypocritical, and condescending. (hide spoiler)] What distinguishes him from hundreds of other male main characters in the last 75 years is that our author recognizes his many failings and plays on them. A thoughtful theme running throughout the book is the ever present choice of disassociating from someone so flawed and risking having to later comingle with someone far worse. It is a particularly current theme in the 2016 American context in which I read this. Society no longer has a tolerance for flawed leaders. Any hint of insensitivity, callousness, or backwardness leads to calls for resignations, firings, censure, and public ridicule. Anyone with the gall or obtuseness to hang on to conservative mannerisms and beliefs is irredeemable. Farmer welcomes you to love or to hate our protagonist, but he doesn't let you forget that any choice you make involves trade-offs. I still haven't decided for myself what I would have done with the protagonist if I'd found myself in his company. The very fact that I'm ambivalent and that I keep thinking about it tells me it was a worthwhile book.