/lit/ - Literature

>>16866934
Gift Of The Manti - J.F. Bone, Roy Meyers (1977)

The Manti are an ancient race whose final enemy is boredom, as all else has been conquered. To alleviate boredom a mated pair travel throughout the galaxy inhabiting other intelligent species to live as they do and to experience all existence has to offer. Eventually they come across Earth and decide to save humanity from itself, or enable their self-destruction, it's all the same really. Humans have so much new and exciting stimuli to offer and they want it all. As a song from a couple years after the book was published said, "You've gotta be cruel to be kind, in the right measure" which is how the Manti justify what they do and the Humans feel likewise about their own actions to each other. Although it starts with the Manti, the vast majority of book takes place from the perspective of a few different humans as they try to cope with the changes wrought by the Manti.
Ending spoiler: A virus from China spreads worldwide and is projected to wipe out 90% of the Human population. The Manti realize there is nothing more for them to do with Earth, so they leave.
Rating: 4/5

At the time of this writing, this is the only legitimate rating and review of this book on Goodreads. The sole other rating is highly suspect. It's difficult to tell, but it's likely I enjoyed this more than it would be enjoyed by theoretical other readers. You may wonder how I came to read this. Some years ago I was reading an anthology of golden age sf and I read some of his stories and then I read one of his novels. I was looking at my to-read list today and I had them sorted by page count to choose a short read and I arbitrarily picked this one.