Ring

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: "Ring" is an amazing exposition on the effects and implications of recent developments in quantum cosmology. Baxter knows his physics, and his use of that knowledge adds that much more intrigue to an already stimulating story. Furthermore, the philosophical issues concerning the dialectic between humanity's rationality and insecurity were quite provocative. A rare kind of book which presents room for both one's imagination and intellect, "Ring" is one of only a few novels which address both science and humanity in such a profound manner. This is an important work, one to be read carefully, slowly, and repeatedly.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I ever read
Review: Alright; the characters are sketchy, the writing is patchy and the pacing is interrupted by long info-dumps. Fine. If you don't like Hard Sf don't read this book. If you do like a rattling space adventure which not merely nods at science, but is actually inspired by it, then Ring is for you. Particularly impressive at the audaciouness of it all, the scope, the way Baxter reinvents standard SF tropes. A strangely gothic tale for Hard SF, as well; a story of people battling to survive in a dying and hostile ruled beings greater than ourselves, and incomprehensible to us. Baxter understands the majesty of decline and entropy better than the American SF writers (Post imperial Britain and all that), and uses it. The reaction reminds me of what Thomas Disch said of Hal Clement (another hard SF great); '...dense, but so is pecan pie.' Dense, and rich with ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Grim up Galactic North
Review: Alright; the characters are sketchy, the writing is patchy and the pacing is interrupted by long info-dumps. Fine. If you don't like Hard Sf don't read this book. If you do like a rattling space adventure which not merely nods at science, but is actually inspired by it, then Ring is for you. Particularly impressive at the audaciouness of it all, the scope, the way Baxter reinvents standard SF tropes. A strangely gothic tale for Hard SF, as well; a story of people battling to survive in a dying and hostile ruled beings greater than ourselves, and incomprehensible to us. Baxter understands the majesty of decline and entropy better than the American SF writers (Post imperial Britain and all that), and uses it. The reaction reminds me of what Thomas Disch said of Hal Clement (another hard SF great); '...dense, but so is pecan pie.' Dense, and rich with ideas.

Rating:
Summary: If I'd wanted a lecture, I'll go to a lecture!
Review: As far as the ideas of grand scifi go, Ring ranks near the top. The story spans 5 million years, two universes and includes one character, Lieserl, a once-human AI whose life spans nearly all 5 millon years. Lieserl is one of the two most interesting characters in the book, the other is a 1000 year old man named Uvarov. Unfortunately, both characters exist only to serve a couple of key plot points. All of the characters are flat and uninteresting, with no decernable personality or drive.

The major elements are interesting, everything between is grating. Particularly the characters propensity to speak the name of the person they are addressing every second time they open their mouths. By the end of the book you will be subconciously filtering out the names, or just skipping the dialog outright. For the most part, you won't miss it.

Every problem is solved almost magically, the characters never break a sweat. Mostly they stand around addressing each other by name and explaining to each other (purely for the readers benefit) the technology and history of the story. The plot is very obviously there only as a tool for the author to speculate about some of the very cool things that an incredibly advance race might do with the universe.

If this book were a blanket, it would be a net of irritating wool holding together some very finely cut jewels. Thats why I'm giving it three stars. Its irritating to use, but still worth having around. If you want silk sheets, try Vernor Vinge instead.

Rating:
Summary: Great ideas, poor execution.
Review: As far as the ideas of grand scifi go, Ring ranks near the top. The story spans 5 million years, two universes and includes one character, Lieserl, a once-human AI whose life spans nearly all 5 millon years. Lieserl is one of the two most interesting characters in the book, the other is a 1000 year old man named Uvarov. Unfortunately, both characters exist only to serve a couple of key plot points. All of the characters are flat and uninteresting, with no decernable personality or drive.

The major elements are interesting, everything between is grating. Particularly the characters propensity to speak the name of the person they are addressing every second time they open their mouths. By the end of the book you will be subconciously filtering out the names, or just skipping the dialog outright. For the most part, you won't miss it.

Every problem is solved almost magically, the characters never break a sweat. Mostly they stand around addressing each other by name and explaining to each other (purely for the readers benefit) the technology and history of the story. The plot is very obviously there only as a tool for the author to speculate about some of the very cool things that an incredibly advance race might do with the universe.

If this book were a blanket, it would be a net of irritating wool holding together some very finely cut jewels. Thats why I'm giving it three stars. Its irritating to use, but still worth having around. If you want silk sheets, try Vernor Vinge instead.

Rating:
Summary: Great Ideas-Story Arc Needs Work
Review: As some have already stated below, the scope and detail of the science of this book is truly astounding. As a cosmology buff, this was a great read concerning cosmic strings, star formation and life, quantum physics, etc. Unfotunately, there isn't a large amount of narrative or character development to pull this stuff along. The characters seem to be there solely to explain to each other what is happening and the science behind it. Often, you can't tell who is speaking and frankly don't care becuase it is pure exposition. None of the characters are particularly well developed beyond archetypes (mad scientist, aborigne rube). I don't want to give the impression that I didn't enjoy it though. I just wish there was a better mesh of the hard-sf with character and plot development. Maybe those are fundamentally incompatible.

Rating:
Summary: Uggh. Baxter is a helluva theorist, but a woeful writer
Review: Baxter has a great imagination, but if Ring is any indication, he can't plot a story to save his life. Dry, cookie-cutter characters, a forced, almost cumbersome plot, sub-par prose, painful dialogue, this is exactly the kind of book that ensures that science fiction will never gain literary respect. As if Baxter wanted to write about this fantastic idea (and it is indeed fantastic), and just threw in some characters for the heck of it. The "conflict" on the starship between the people below and above was totally unnecessary, seemingly existing merely to fill pages. You've really got to suffer to get through to the interesting stuff at the end - and not in a Hemmingway kind of way. I mean suffer because you're reading such crap. I realize that most sci fi fans care first about the science, but this story desperatly needs emotion, life, something to make me care. There was one interesting (potentially) character, Liseral (sp?), but Baxter seemingly shrugged off her fascinating story and made her dialogue indistinguishable from any of the other characters (without tags, you'd never know who was speaking). Read it, if you must, for the idea. A writer might have made a great book out of it. Unfortunatly, a writer Baxter is not.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent; Hard SF at its best.
Review: Baxter has a knack for zooming out on the universe and giving the reader a sense of awe at the scope of his stories. Ring is, so far, the best I have read from Baxter. One of the great things about this book (and others in the Xeelee series) is that you don't need to read them in order, since each of them have very specific plots which are related but not dependent on the others.

The only thing that bugs me now is how the wormhole interfaces react differently to being used during relativistic travel than they did in Flux. However since I am a fan of Star Trek I am used to continuity blunders far greater than this.

A very good read. It's a shame Raft is out of print!

Rating:
Summary: 1000 years, and it seemed much longer...
Review: Baxter is very good with up-to-date science, and if you want a science lecture on stellar dynamics, dark matter or singularities, this is a good textbook for you. But if you want a highly engaging story with developed characters, I'd skip this one. Mr. Baxter's editor must think that characters are just window dressing, in which case the characters in Ring are perfect, because they display all the life signs of a group of mannequins.
Although the science is generally very well used, there are plot inconsistencies which really bothered me. For one thing, this story is supposed to take place in two time frames: 1000 years and five million years. This little detail seems to be ignored when in comes to showing character development and technological development. 1000 years is seemingly enough time for the technology to have improved quite a bit. Five million years should have enabled technological development to answer all the problems faced by the crew of the Great Northern. I have to say that the only reason I finished this book was because I was on vacation and had nothing else to read. It was, I think, about the driest read I've had since the last Rama book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Mind Candy
Review: Big in scope, in time and space. How does it feel to be the last humans alive? How does it feel to live for a thousand years? The author will make you feel all these things and more. Weak characters and inconsistent plotting, however, make this novel fall well short of a "10"