There was an interesting setup - a superintelligent android, the man who rediscovered reading, a woman who refused to take the mind-control drugs - but there wasn't the payoff in the end that I was hoping for. The long stretches of diary entries by Paul felt like filler in places, not really fitting in to the rest of the story in any way that led somewhere. I think you are supposed to admire the way he reinvents the emotions of love and compassion for himself, but too much of it comes of as kind of obtuse. Probably for its time the way love and sex were depicted in the book were provocative although it's hard to see them that way now. For a dystopian novel there was a lot less of the atmosphere of doom around our characters than most because of the general breakdown in systems that felt to me like it didn't gibe with the idea of a superintelligent being. Perhaps it was the suicidal tendencies that Spofford harbored that ended up being expressed in the world he was supposed to take care of.