Rating: 
Summary: How to build a new Russia in outerspace
Review: A new Russia and Middle East is being built on a terra-formed planet in a newly discovered solar system, but are the settlers alone? If you like sleuthing this is the science fiction for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many mistakes...
Review: Although it was funny to read the review of mr.uladzik, who is too much of a Belarusian patriot ;-), he makes some right points.
1. Belarus is a small former republic of former Soviet Union, and it doesn't translate as White Russia
2. There are so many mistakes in Russian names that it becomes annoying after being funny for a while
3. Except for these wrong Russian names there is nothing about Russia in the book; people have a lot of American habits - like "ordering in the subs"... in Russia people don't order in and almost don't eat subs ;-) it is a small thing, but there are so much of them
4. Too much religion... Russia is much less religious now than let's say USA. Overall author probably got some information about Russia from an American whose great-grandparents had emigrated from Russia in 20's, but it wouldn't harm to give this book for review to some Russian who would correct all these mistakes for couple hundred dollars. I really don't understand why the author was so greedy not to do so; I guess her books don't sell well enough ;-)
If you want to understand Russia better, read Chekhov, or even better Bulgakov - "The Master and Margarita", "Dog's Heart" etc... It is not Dostoevsky or Tolstoy ;-) you can actually read these books...
Rating:
Summary: Too many mistakes...
Review: Although it was funny to read the review [of another], who is too much of a Belarusian patriot ;-), he makes some right points.
1. Belarus is a small former republic of former Soviet Union, and it doesn't translate as White Russia
2. There are so many mistakes in Russian names that it becomes annoying after being funny for a while
3. Except for these wrong Russian names there is nothing about Russia in the book; people have a lot of American habits - like "ordering in the subs"... in Russia people don't order in and almost don't eat subs ;-) it is a small thing, but there are so much of them
4. Too much religion... Russia is much less religious now than let's say USA. Overall author probably got some information about Russia from an American whose great-grandparents had emigrated from Russia in 20's, but it wouldn't harm to give this book for review to some Russian guy who would correct all these mistakes for couple hundred dollars...
If you want to understand Russia better, read Chekhov, or even better Bulgakov -...
Rating: 
Summary: Best dollar I've spent!
Review: I bought this book and one other at the dollar store, the other buck was a miss, but I really liked this sci-fi book. It's a great page turner, the author gives you a vision of what the future may be like when humans reach for the stars, lots of nano tech. This book tries to cover a lot of ground, and i think it succeeds very well, it kept me up all night. At the end, there is a hint of a sequel, which I hope gets written.
Rating:
Summary: Best dollar I've spent!
Review: I bought this book and one other at the dollar store, the other buck was a miss, but I really liked this sci-fi book. It's a great page turner, the author gives you a vision of what the future may be like when humans reach for the stars, lots of nano tech. This book tries to cover a lot of ground, and i think it succeeds very well, it kept me up all night. At the end, there is a hint of a sequel, which I hope gets written.
Rating:
Summary: The cover art is nice!
Review: I haven't bought any sci-fi books for ages as I can't find much I like, but this book I did. Andrei and the other characters were likeable and sympathetic (unlike in so many sci-fi novels) and the story was interesting - I liked the focus on Russia, or the Russia of the future (instead of the usual tedious gung-ho American protagonists ;-)). Perhaps my only two quibbles were 1) the resurrection of the Tsarist/Imperial past (a brutal system which saw tyrants oppress much of the population for centuries) and 2) the continuation of religion - in the form of the Orthodox Church - into the far future (also an anachronistic institution that helped keep Russia in the Dark Ages). One hopes that humans would have evolved beyond the need for religion 20,000 years into the future!
Rating:
Summary: Oooooooooooo....
Review: I really didn't like this. Found much of it to be gibberish and incomprehensible. It seemed to be about a man who was in line to be Tsar of Russia in the 200th century rebuilding his country on a new planet that happened to be booby trapped by a race of really nasty insects who eat each others livers. It's a future in which most of the humans have cybernetics and live hundreds of years and some machines have developed their own independent identities. This last might have been an interesting idea, but it wasn't really developed. And neither were the reasons for rebuilding Russia ever made clear. Some characters somewhere seemed to think it was being rebuilt to become an amusement park or something. There were characters who were engineers of worlds who reminded me of nothing so much as Slartibartfast who designed fjords on the coast of Africa in "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy". And there was nothing Russian about the book other than a few names and the fact that the characters keep saying the cities that would be built would be like Russian cities. There's a character named "Baba Yaga" who is supposed to be all mysterious and brilliant, but the concept just falls flat. I didn't get any sense of the author's working with folklore at all. Finally, I'm sorry to be so negative about this, but if you have a romantic bone in your body and don't enjoy insects in your sci-fi this one is a definite miss. Aside from the gross-out factor, which some people may like, I don't see much else to recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Yuck
Review: I really didn't like this. Found much of it to be gibberish and incomprehensible. It seemed to be about a man who was in line to be Tsar of Russia in the 200th century rebuilding his country on a new planet that happened to be booby trapped by a race of really nasty insects who eat each others livers. It's a future in which most of the humans have cybernetics and live hundreds of years and some machines have developed their own independent identities. This last might have been an interesting idea, but it wasn't really developed. And neither were the reasons for rebuilding Russia ever made clear. Some characters somewhere seemed to think it was being rebuilt to become an amusement park or something. There were characters who were engineers of worlds who reminded me of nothing so much as Slartibartfast who designed fjords on the coast of Africa in "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy". And there was nothing Russian about the book other than a few names and the fact that the characters keep saying the cities that would be built would be like Russian cities. There's a character named "Baba Yaga" who is supposed to be all mysterious and brilliant, but the concept just falls flat. I didn't get any sense of the author's working with folklore at all. Finally, I'm sorry to be so negative about this, but if you have a romantic bone in your body and don't enjoy insects in your sci-fi this one is a definite miss. Aside from the gross-out factor, which some people may like, I don't see much else to recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A re-interpretation of Russian society in the Far Future
Review: In the far future, a rich patron re-invents Russian society on the ideal planetary system. But there are forces at work that he and the others on the project know nothing about or can not control. This is a very impressive book, but does leave a couple of things in the translation. I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend it, but the prospective reader must be aware of a few details: First of all, while reading this book, I was reminded of "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion" by Dan Simmons. For me, this book accomplishes some of the goals of "The Fall" in a much neater fashion. And, though this book might seem derivative in that light, I think that there is enough inventiveness here for it to stand on its own. So, in this book, instead of the Shrike religion, we have the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead of the AIs we have Sprite Mind. And finally, instead of the Shrike (as killers), we have the Enemies. But the comparisons don't end there. The enhanced combat suits of "Hyperion" have become the ESAs of "Belarus". And the time traveling "Time Tombs" have become Baba Yaga of Russian mythology. Lee Hogan takes all the elements discussed here along with a serial killer and an intergalactic war and weaves them into a tight story about the search for "Mir" (the Russian word for peace, and much, much more). If you liked the world of "Hyperion" you will like this book. I thought that "Belarus" accomplised its aims in a very compact story, and although the hint of a sequel is present throughout, this story does stand completely on its own. In addition, there are enough unique characters here, like Tsar Andrei and Engineer Talya that readers would be hooked, even if there is a sequel. And finally, to finish the comparison with "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion", Lee Hogan manages to resolve some of the conflicts without (at least not yet) resorting to the total annihilation of Humans, Enemies or A.I.s which is pretty pessimistic. In other words, her vision is more optimistic, a view missing from some of today's Sci-Fi.
Rating:
Summary: A re-interpretation of Russian society in the Far Future
Review: In the far future, a rich patron re-invents Russian society on the ideal planetary system. But there are forces at work that he and the others on the project know nothing about or can not control. This is a very impressive book, but does leave a couple of things in the translation. I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend it, but the prospective reader must be aware of a few details: First of all, while reading this book, I was reminded of "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion" by Dan Simmons. For me, this book accomplishes some of the goals of "The Fall" in a much neater fashion. And, though this book might seem derivative in that light, I think that there is enough inventiveness here for it to stand on its own. So, in this book, instead of the Shrike religion, we have the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead of the AIs we have Sprite Mind. And finally, instead of the Shrike (as killers), we have the Enemies. But the comparisons don't end there. The enhanced combat suits of "Hyperion" have become the ESAs of "Belarus". And the time traveling "Time Tombs" have become Baba Yaga of Russian mythology. Lee Hogan takes all the elements discussed here along with a serial killer and an intergalactic war and weaves them into a tight story about the search for "Mir" (the Russian word for peace, and much, much more). If you liked the world of "Hyperion" you will like this book. I thought that "Belarus" accomplised its aims in a very compact story, and although the hint of a sequel is present throughout, this story does stand completely on its own. In addition, there are enough unique characters here, like Tsar Andrei and Engineer Talya that readers would be hooked, even if there is a sequel. And finally, to finish the comparison with "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion", Lee Hogan manages to resolve some of the conflicts without (at least not yet) resorting to the total annihilation of Humans, Enemies or A.I.s which is pretty pessimistic. In other words, her vision is more optimistic, a view missing from some of today's Sci-Fi.
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