The chances that I would read a book about aliens or about mathematics are quite low. The thought of me reading a book with both topics as central themes seemed to be completely ridiculous. And yet… one very enthusiastic review was enough to put the book on my ereader. Where it remained unopened for quite a while. It took some quotes posted by a friend with similar book taste to raise my curiosity again. Because of the review and the quotes my expectations where quite high, which may be the reason why I felt a bit disappointed afterwards. The alien idea is a good one, but it wasn’t taken far enough to make it fully work for me. It seemed like the author was trying very hard to convince the reader that humans are good after all, that life is beautiful and we should be grateful for it. It’s a pity Nick Hornby didn’t come up with this subject matter. I’m sure the book would have ended up being hilarious instead of just funny, cynical instead of moderately critical, a must-read instead of a hesitant recommendation.