Rating: 
Summary: The beginning of something big
Review: The first book in MacLeods Engines of Light series and the first thing that he has written since the Fall Revolution series.It's clear to see that MacLeod has had better time for planning before he started this series - the universe seems better structured and the foundation a lot more stable than it did in The Fall Revolution. MacLeod seems a lot more secures as he shows us glimpses of his universe. This book has two story lines. One telling the tale of how man found faster-than-light travel and one about a marine biologist (and his friends) on the planet of Mingled. And then there's the gods to connect them. MacLeod is better than ever in this book. Unfortunately he looses it a bit the sequel (Dark Light), but that's another story.
Rating: 
Summary: Close to being great SF - but not close enough
Review: There are some notable similarities between this book and the novel "Chasm City" by Alastair Reynolds. Both have split storylines - one storyline dealing with life on a planet colonised by humans, another set in the relative past that explains how the colonists got there. I've got to say that I enjoyed Chasm City slightly more than Cosmonaut Keep. Ken Macleod's future universe is more interesting and imaginative than Reynolds', with all sorts of creatures such as Babylonians, dinosaurs and squid living many light years from Earth. But the book didn't really engage my emotions or generate enough tension. For example, the lead character on the colonised planet falls in love, but it didn't really move me... there has been a secret project going on within his family, but it seems to be completed all too easily. The other section of the book posits an interesting near future, with a once-again socialist Russia dominating the whole of Europe. I liked some of the touches here - for example, with Scotland a separate satellite state of Russia, England is now the Former United Kingdom. But although it's fairly well done, I didn't find it very believable. I might be doing the book an injustice, as I read it rather quickly. But I can't think of any parts of it that I want to re-read,and that's not a good sign.. One final thought - if you play Civilization III, you could use Macleod's universe as a setting for a game.
Rating:
Summary: High expectations, low fulfillment
Review: Upon reading the inside flap I was hooked and after enduring the first 6 chapters I knew I would be engaged in a marathon, only not the kind I had been hoping for when picking the book up from the shelf. Many times before triumphantly turning the final page I felt as though I had to bite down on a leather strap to make it through the ordeal. The storyline has all of potential to have been an epic on the level of Frank Herbert's Dune, but Ken MacLeod turns away from that challenge by offering trite characters, a shallow plot and an overemphasis (running throughout his work) on marijuana use and an odd fascination with portraying communism as a triumphant ideology. Those who say that MacLeod is the brightest new star in sci-fi are setting their expectations far too low be bestowing that crown upon this author.
Rating: 
Summary: Macleod's authorial mid-life crisis?
Review: What's happening to Ken MacLeod? It seems to be a kind of authorial mid-lfe crisis for SF authors that they have to write a three-volume space opera or they won't feel complete. Some of these are superb though: for example, Peter Hamiliton's 'Night's Dawn' sequence and Paul J. MacAuley's recent trilogy. Macleod's (at least judging by this first volume), doesn't measure up. Despite having reservations about his ability to really sustain a story, and his often wooden or stereotyped characters, I've always enjoyed his books, not least because of their determinedly idiosyncratic left-wing politics and situations. This one is also enjoyable enough, and has some great individual scenes (in particular the dinosaur-herding-by-flying-saucer bit), but it is too much of the same: parrallel stories (again), beautiful dark-haired heroines (again) etc. And, some of the devices needed to keep the plot going just make you go "D'oh!". I also found the nearer future story-line featuring a group of very dull computer hackers and their friends, uninvolving. I was left feeling unsure whether the whole thing wasn't meant as parody, and perhaps that the author wasn't sure either. Oh well...
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