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Title: Jump in tone and theme between first and second halves
Review: I read this on the recommendation of a German friend (who, of course, read the original, not the translation). I'm not quite sure what to make of it--I feel like, in production, the switch in tone from rather larkily written "does love overwhelm even madmen?" farce to serious commentary on the responsibility of scientists in a commercial, WMD-manufacturing world (and the ego it takes to believe you can control knowledge and its use) could feel more like a nuanced punchline, a clever bait-and-switch, than it does on paper. On paper, it feels disorienting. Reading it over a second or third time might help me uncover more thematic links and foreshadowing to tie the two halves together, but a first readthrough left me feeling that I had read a piece that had ambitions it didn't manage to achieve.
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