Rating: 
Summary: A Funny Mixure
Review: The story starts out well with a good strong female lead character and with post-human touches such as illegal genetic engineering, shadowy AIs up to their own activities and the mysterious death of a famous physicist for the heroine to investigate. Unfortunately the middle sags quite a bit, slow going, I almost gave up with little happening and lots of minor and confusing characters being introduced to little apparent effect. The ending picks up again thank god and the last 80-100 pages are pretty good (she can do good love scenes, good fight scenes, good AI mind-melds, and post-human cybernetic enhancements are good too).
One of my major problems with the story is that the quantum teleportation/FTL communication systems used by the civilization is never really explained, terms like Bose-Einstein condensate, spin stream and slow time are thrown about but never detailed. We are expected to swallow the idea that Bose-Einstein condenstates exist naturally in some crystalline form buried in a coal mine on a distant planet, where they are mined by normal (and some biologically enhanced) humans hundreds of years from now, in a fashion very similar to a 19th or 20th century coal mine. Full of pissed off Irish miners and very 19th/20th century management vs the workers politics. Black lung disease and Davey lamps yet! Yeah sure, and I'll bet there's a colony world nearby with knights on horseback armed with laser rifles and laptops...
No justification is provided for the existance of B-E condensates in a coal mine at high temperatures, it's just assumed for the sake of having a vital, finite resource for the U.N. humans and the mysterious "Syndicate" to fight over. How B-E condensates are related to the (hinted at but never really described) quantum teleportation technology the civilization uses is never explained either. "The science is good too" according to Stephen Baxter's blurb on the back-cover - no it isn't, it's almost non-existent.
At one point a relative of the murdered physicist takes off in some sort of (apparently) slower-than-normal starship that cannot be intercepted until it arrives at its destination because it's in "slow time", but what exactly this means is never explained. It's going to arrive at its destination in a couple of weeks planet-time so it's not slow-time as in relativistic time dialation, so what the heck is it? We never find out.
The AI and cyborg stuff is much better done and the AI Cohen comes across as the most likable character by far. Heroine Major Catherine Li is brave, strong, blood-thirsty at times but emotionally a mess, and hard to feel much sympathy for by the end I'm afraid.
Overall this book is like the Curate's egg--good in parts. But the author really should study taut, S.F. page-turners like Richard Morgan's ALTERED CARBON, a really stunning first novel. Still, I think there's hope for future work, she's got a good style and if she can get the kinks worked out the next novel might be much better. The potential is certainly there.
P.S. All that research in quantum physics and quantum information theory, etc. listed at the end of the book and virtually none of it ends up in the story, aside from some throwaway terminology! Just tragic.
Rating: 
Summary: Moriarty certainly knows how to "spin" sci-fi!
Review: This book captures your imagination and attention from the beginning and catapults you into the fantastic just as other books along similar lines: "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Foundation", "Ringworld", "I,Robot", "Rendezvous with Rama", "Childhood's End", "Advent of the Corps", and so forth.
Rating: 
Summary: good, but falls a little short
Review: This book had a lot of interesting ideas, settings and characters but ultimately I felt that it fell a little bit short of its true potential. The writing style and characterizations at times reminded me of another new piece of sci-fi, Altered Carbon, a reminder that I felt was unfortunate, since overall this was a much better work. There were some truly novel technologies and concepts that I wish had been described and explored in more detail. The author obviously did his homework, based on the list of textbooks and articles referenced in the endnotes, but perhaps he (or his editor?) was worried about getting too technical and scaring off readers? Its a shame becuase quantum computing and communication are cutting edge topics that I haven't seen addressed in much detail in any other current science fiction (and obviously not older classics). The other frustration was with the pace. So much went on in the middle 300 pages that was ultimately just backfill. And then, the ending felt rushed. But in contrast to another reviewer, I found the last 20-30 pages to be some of the best. And when I finished I found myself thinking for several hours/days afterwards about the revelations. So, like I said, this was good sci-fi, I just wish it had been better. Hopefully the author will return to this setting in future works.
Rating:
Summary: Hard science mixed with a dash of romance
Review: This book has it all. A kickass heroine, a mystery to be solved, fascinating speculation on quantum physics and the evolution of Artificial Intelligences. And did I mention the love story? It's hard to sum up this book because there's so much to enjoy. Major Catherine Li is a fascinating character- a woman who has hidden her past even from herself. For years she's managed to hold things together, but when she returns to her homeworld everything starts falling apart, and she no longer knows who to trust. Suddenly it's not enough to solve the murder mystery-- she has to find a way to get herself out alive.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but difficult to follow at times
Review: This book was an enjoyable read, but it has some difficult in explaining the more technical concepts to the reader. For example, I had a bit of difficulty understanding when the characters were acting in real space, and when they were performing actions in virtual reality (spin space?). Minor characters pop up from time to time and you forget who they are or why they're important. You also have to get used to pretty much every important character in the story being female -- not that it's a problem, but it does become strange after a while. I feel the story's strength is in how it protrays the AI characters, but at the same time the technical details aren't spelled out well enough for you to understand how the AI characters work, or what they really are. I give this book 4 stars for being an original and entertaining story. I would have given it 5 had the technical concepts been explained in more detail.
Rating:
Summary: A Talent to Watch
Review: This is an amazing first book. The author plunges you into the middle of a completely new world. The science and the human (and artificial intelligence) are seamless.
Rating:
Summary: Amazingly good
Review: This is one of those books that you remember. Not just a good read. A profoundly amazing piece of literature. I will be shocked if it doesn't win awards. Do yourself a favor and read this...twice.
Rating:
Summary: Good hard SF concepts, average crime novel
Review: This novel starts strongly, by showing us a glimpse of a 'posthuman' world where people backup their memories and where AIs can hijack ("shunt") human beings for a joyride. The protagonist is a strong, tough female, suggesting a welcome change to other SF male leads. Unfortunately, the novel quickly devolves into a 'whodunnit?' about a scientist murdered in a coal mine. It's a bit sad that such interesting hard SF concepts such as quantum teleportation, 'spinstream' and Emergent AIs are presented through a very ho-hum, run-of-the-mill detective story, and this is what makes 'Spin State' so frustrating to read. It gets better after roughly half of the novel, but the novel never really exceeds the awesome potential that it seemed to have. Whereby it could have been a gritty 'Snow Crash' set in space, it ends up being a detective story with a space opera backdrop. If you're looking for a crime novel, skip this because it doesn't offer anything beyond clichés such as characters cryptically helping the protagonist along for convoluted reasons. If you're curious about intriguing new SF concepts, then it's worth to go through this book regardless of the detective story.
Rating:
Summary: Good hard SF concepts, average crime novel
Review: This novel starts strongly, by showing us a glimpse of a 'posthuman' world where people backup their memories and where AIs can hijack ("shunt") human beings for a joyride. The protagonist is a strong, tough female, suggesting a welcome change to other SF male leads. Unfortunately, the novel quickly devolves into a 'whodunnit?' about a scientist murdered in a coal mine. It's a bit sad that such interesting hard SF concepts such as quantum teleportation, 'spinstream' and Emergent AIs are presented through a very ho-hum, run-of-the-mill detective story, and this is what makes 'Spin State' so frustrating to read. It gets better after roughly half of the novel, but the novel never really exceeds the awesome potential that it seemed to have. Whereby it could have been a gritty 'Snow Crash' set in space, it ends up being a detective story with a space opera backdrop. If you're looking for a crime novel, skip this because it doesn't offer anything beyond clichés such as characters cryptically helping the protagonist along for convoluted reasons. If you're curious about intriguing new SF concepts, then it's worth to go through this book regardless of the detective story.
Rating: 
Summary: dissapointing
Review: To be fair, I read this immediately following "Pandora's Star" by Peter F. Hamilton, by all accounts a tough act to follow. I've also read Richard Morgan's fantastic Takeshi Kovacs novels, which Moriarity seems heavily influenced by. Chris(tine?) Moriarity, however, is no Richard Morgan, which is demonstrated by the following failings evidenced by Spin State: 1. From a prurient standpoint, Moriarity tackles violence and sex in a far more restrained manner than Morgan--which is one large component of what makes Altered carbon so visceral. That the author toned down these elements gave the book a cartoonish aspect. Though I wasn't adverse to the books' one lesbian scene, albeit poorly described. 2. the characters seem to blur together, only to pop up and perform an action essential to jumpstart the ailing plot line. Although the book's antagonists are equally vile, they never really take on distinct form. 3. the poor male stereotypes in the book: the sadist, the stupid innocent, the charming manipulator (a couple of these). The author's opinions of mankind are verified with the female protagonist's choice of a mate at the conclusion of the book. I wasn't sure if the author was female or not, due to the unisex "Chris" but these negative characterizations of men were a large clue and a big turn off. All this is not to say I wasn't entertained by the book to a degree, though at times it felt like work, but all and all I was disappointed. I feel that Moriarity (must be contrived, the Sherlock Holmes villain, please...) has trespassed on sacred ground, that is the last sanctuary safe from the PC/multicultural blight that besets our age, the world of speculative fiction.
|
