Storyline: 5/5 
 Characters: 3/5 
 Writing Style: 3/5 
 World: 5/5 
 --Below information added approximately a year after original reading-- 
 This is a tale that has been told again and again and again and again.... All slightly differently retellings, for sure. Also, they're probably all emulating or respond to Clarke's Childhood's End. Clarke did it right from the beginning, in the 1950s. He captured our hopes and our fears. He wrote about our future the way I think it would happen if such events did come about. It so closely mirrored my own thinking that there weren't a lot of surprises. I would nod and uhuh, adding my affirmations as the chapters went along. It is entirely possible I've been shaped by the worldview Clarke created years before I was born. It is also just as likely that he caught onto some of the enduring characteristics of western civilization. 
 If there was a place where he showed me something unexpected, it was with the aura of the tale. This was on the verge of being a horror story at times. There was a fatalistic malingering. Every time an Overlord spoke or acted, it was with a resignation of the things to come. They (and thereby Clarke) knew something our main characters (and thus we) did not. There was a despondent eeriness that pervaded the story until the depths of that pessimism were revealed. Its melancholy was an effect and end well-constructed and full of depressing vigor.