Strength of Stones

Rating:
Summary: Interesting ideas and fun to read
Review: Divided into 3 books, each basically a story in itself, Strength of Stones is about a planet colonised by humans that built cities that are themselves practically living entities. Unfortunately the cities judged the humans unfit and chucked them out. Strength of stones is set many years after this happened....

I love these kind of stories that let my imagination run free with new ideas during and after I've read it.

I had already read Queen of Angels and read Songs of Earth and power afterwards without realising they were by the same author. Strength of Stones was definitely much easier for me to read than the other two (which is not to say I didn't like them!) and I can thouroughly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable Vision
Review: In my experience, Bear is a great writer if you want to be made to think. This is the only novel of his that I have read, and I find it quite up to his standard. More personal than his signature short story "Blood Music" (later expanded into a novel), _Strength of Stones_ examines several very human issues, primarily religion. If you're ready to be made to think, this is an excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: Make you think ...
Review: In my experience, Bear is a great writer if you want to be made to think. This is the only novel of his that I have read, and I find it quite up to his standard. More personal than his signature short story "Blood Music" (later expanded into a novel), _Strength of Stones_ examines several very human issues, primarily religion. If you're ready to be made to think, this is an excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting ideas and fun to read
Review: This story went a bit all over the map. Not as good as some of his later work. Not recommended. Instead read Blood Music or Eon, both wonderfully imaginative stories by this author.

Rating:
Summary: Erratic SF
Review: This story went a bit all over the map. Not as good as some of his later work. Not recommended. Instead read Blood Music or Eon, both wonderfully imaginative stories by this author.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable Vision
Review: What a fascinating idea! Greg Bear has a remarkable vision for the future of both religion and architecture that will leave you in awe. These are not normal subjects for SciFi, and it's a really interesting trip.

I had read Strength of Stones before, and returned to it after recently reading Greg Bear's "Vitals." Vitals has a complete shipwreck of an ending (literally and figuratively!), and I'm realizing that this is typical of Greg Bear. Even his best ("Eon") has a kind of fuzzy ending. "Strength of Stones" is great until the last few pages, when the action suddenly shifts to a different continent, with a completely different vision of the future of architecture and religion. Where did that come from!??! It seems that Mr. Bear just doesn't know how to end a book in a way that makes any sense. Despite this, Strength of Stones is a great journey, even if the ending is botched.

I docked a star from this particular printing. The paperback with a green cover is listed as an "iBook." I don't know what that means, but I think this is a different publisher than the copy I originally read. Several sections of this book read like a previous printing of it was sent through OCR, and then the editing was poor. For example, "walls" shows up as "wails" several times. Also, one character's name switches back and forth between "Lod" and "Led." (I seem to recall it was "Lod" in the original.) I'm not sure where this publishing run came from, but it's a bit frustrating to read. If there's an earlier run of this book available in your local used book shop, you might be better off with that version.