Rating: 
Summary: If you can just get through this...
Review: Pieces from the first trilogy start coming together here, in a place far removed from the Gubru and the great battles fought over Earth's skies over the scout ship Streaker. It brings out a great deal of information needed to piece together the puzzle of both the first trilogy and Jijo itself.The main drawbacks are that it is fairly slow in building up steam, plus the story seems to cut away what were probably seen as being unneeded story elements (such as the "patrons of humanity", if you read the last book you know what I mean). This is unfortunate, but somewhat understandable. Things need to go in a new direction. Still, this is a method I would rather not have seen used. What the story ends up with is a new begining, aimed, of course, at the final book in this trilogy. Anyone looking to get this should just go ahead and buy Heaven's Reach right now, or you will probably regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Story gets lost in the flood of peripheral characters
Review: Sorry, David Brin. There's in no question that you have brilliant ideas and very creatively conceived aliens, but this book and the preceding one of the series are so loaded with undeveloped characters that they tend to blur into a bunch of exotic names with no substance. When I found myself skipping chapters to get on to the characters in whom I found something to identify with, I knew I was lost. While reading this book, I kept stopping to read others, hoping that when I came back to it I would finally be able to really get into it and maybe even finish reading all the chapters I had skipped. I have very mixed feelings about David Brin's writing because I do admire his imagination and really intriguing ideas. But I think he needs to present the reader with a strong protagonist, well defined in all respects, rather than a plethora of shallow characters that we really cannot know very well. Perhaps the most disturbing thing, for me, about Infinity's Shore, is that it has the potential to be a really exceptional read, if all the unnecessary trivialities were excised and the strong story line was allowed to develope via strong and unforgettable characters. Remember: All of the classics, whether in literature, drama, or film, are sparse in the quantity of protagonists and strong on their development.
Rating: 
Summary: You wont be able to put it down!
Review: The book continues on the excitment he build up to in book 1. You will want to rush out and get book 3 ASAP!!
Rating: 
Summary: Infinite filler
Review: The exciting conclusion and numerous outbreaks of brilliance elsewhere in this book almost made me forget how much of it was pointless filler. Make no mistake, it's eminently worth reading. The four or five characters that Brin really focuses on are compelling, at times irritating, and always interesting. The aliens are often truly alien, and not just humans in latex, as is so often the case in bad SF. The plot is interesting and contorted, leading to a fast-paced ending that leaves me aching for a sequel. However, deep flaws offset these virtues. The cast of characters is bigger than in War and Peace, and Brin is no Tolstoy. Many of the characters, both human and alien, are so unidimensional as to be indistinguishable from each other. Alvin, the main alien character, is the worst example of this flaw. He reads like a (not terribly good) caricature of a pre-teen human, rather than an alien being with alien emotions.
Weighing against the fascinating main plots are a plethora of pointless subplots that add nothing except verbiage.
But the greatest sin is repetitiveness. Brin's technique of telling the story from several characters' viewpoints is occasionally intriguing when they draw different conclusions from the same facts. But all too often it results in four people saying the same thing four different ways, which is tedious.
The recapitulation of the prior book adds another layer of repetition. Rather than have a ten page summary at the beginning, Brin has each character summarize his or her experiences. It isn't until page 100 (really!) that anything new happens. On several occasions, it was real work to keep going while waiting for something to happen.
The plot is also a little too gimicky, relying on the characters forgetting to mention things that they notice or know, and then suddenly revealing them to generate a phoney surprise.
Brin is far too good a writer to have made such an interesting book such hard work. I hope he does better on the sequel.
Rating:
Summary: Continuing Jijo's Story...A Strong Follow-Up
Review: The illegal, backwater colony of Jijo has been thrown into turmoil. Six sooner races inhabit this Galactically-proclaimed fallow world...knowing their colony would oneday attract the attention of Galactic society. Now they have...and it is nothing like they thought it would be. Instead of official representatives from the Galactic Migration Institute coming to mete out long overdue justice, Jijo has attracted those who would stop at nothing to hunt down the dolphin-crewed Streaker, still on the run after narrowly escaping the bickering clans fighting over her above the ocean world Kithrup (read Startide Rising). Streaker has come to Jijo to lick her wounds...and determine the next course of action in an attempt to get the cargo they are carrying back to the Terragens Council, or at least someone neutral, someone who won't use what Streaker discovered in the Shallow Cluster to take control of a Galactic Civilization now in turmoil. In the midst of all this, the technologically inferior inhabitants of Jijo must not only deal with the worst Galactic civlization has to offer, but must also deal with the growing fissions within their own peaceful culture.
Infinity's Shore was a bit of a surprise for me. Coming off Brightness Reef, which at times tended to drag on a bit and get mired in minutiae not particularily related to the story, this book was an easy page turner. But more importantly than that, it began to establish links between characters and plotlines the previous book stubbornly refused to do. The inhabitants of Jijo introduced to us in Brightness Reef -- Alvin and his friends as well as Sara, Dwer, Lark, Rety -- began heading in a coherent, if not always unified, direction. While the characters native to Jijo finally took steps toward their "destiny" (a.k.a what Brin has in mind for them), the characters aboard the Streaker begin to connect to the environs around them, if a bit circuitously at first (i.e. automated scouts sent to "sniff" out the Jijoan culture).
What it all boils down to is a plain old good book. Character and plotline development is much better than its immediate predecessor, "stuff" happens that makes you want to see what happens next, and like any good trilogy, there is just enough left frustratingly out of reach for the final book. The one gripe is that there really is no conclusion to Infinity's Shore, probably quite irksome when it first came out and the next book, Heaven's Reach was a couple years away, but now it was only slightly annoying, seeing as how Heaven's Reach was sitting on top of my pile of to-read books waiting to be picked up as soon as this installment was completed. This story is a fine addition to the Uplift universe and I now anticipate completing the final installment with due haste.
Rating:
Summary: Good one, but left me feeling let down...
Review: The long awaited sequel to Brightness Reef brings the stalwart
adventurers of the Streaker still running from the rest of galactic
society due to their discoveries made in a small, forgotten, sector
of space.
I had been waiting for this book for months, being tantalized by the
possibilities in Brightness Reef and was happily surprised initially.
There was great stuff here! More backgrounds on the powerful Jophur,
and the lying Rothen. I was VERY happy to see, read, and experience
all the trials and tribulations of the Streaker.
My only question now is, when are we going to end this thing? This is
a great series, but beset by the simple fact that each book ends with
the exact same situation "Streaker just missed getting captured, now
working its way to yet ANOTHER place to hide." It's beginning to sound
like Star Trek in a way, with one hour serialized novels.
Luckily, David Brin is such a good storyteller that he makes it all
worthwhile to stick it out, but there are times when I was left
waiting for more - a little too dry.
Overall I heartily recommend this book to everyone, although I would
suggest reading Brightness Reef first to get some of the backround
information -- and better yet to start at the beginning with Startide
Rising and go on.
Rating:
Summary: brin puts you right with the characters in this book,
Review: the premise is excellent, a group of galactic refugees stranded on an isolated planet and forced to put aside philosiphical and physical differences and form a society. but the idyllic life is shattered by arrival of galactic searchers whose motives are questioned. the gripping tale deserves a reading. you won't be disappointed
Rating:
Summary: The Fat Lady starts gargling on Brin's epic space opera.
Review: The story of the starship Streaker continues in this second volume of Brin's New Uplift Trilogy, with Brin's usual mix of arch humour, labyrinthine storytelling, bewitching characters and locales and an underlying element of high camp which makes the whole confection completely irresistable,
There's an undeniable fin de siecle feel to this volume of the increasingly epic story, a sense of the various storylines gathering themselves in readiness for the third and one assumes final volume in the story of Gillian Baskin and her valiant crew of dolphins and humans. In the hands of a lesser author the story would have collapsed under the weight of it's words, but Brin keeps us enthralled with the twists and turns of the story, with the amazing, yet strangely believeable alien beings, from the squid-in-a-wheelchair g'Kek to the equine Urs, and even with the faintly otherworldly voice he has chosen for all his uplift novels.
In all, Brin has continued the remarkable tale with all the skill and panache one expects from him. He writes like Niven used to, before his love of the new and strange left him, or like Baxter and Banks still do.
It is said that the era of the space opera is over. With David Brin still working, that cannot be the case
Rating:
Summary: Uplift Trilogy collapses under its own weight
Review: The Uplift Trilogy collapses under its own weight with this volume.
This story continues the story of the dolphin-crewed "Streaker" introduced in "The Uplift War" and inhabitants of the planet Jijo introduced in "Brightness Reef".
I liked the "Uplift War" (first published in the 80's?). However, I think their are too many characters on the planet Jijo. And, some of them are just too cute.
The "Uplift Saga" is beginning to remind me of Gregory Benford's "Galactic Center" series. I believe Mr. Brin intends to drag this story out for 10 years to help pay his mortgage like Mr. Benford did. This story has been dragging on for so many years (real and story), words, and characters I can't follow it any longer. A large amount of this book is spent refreshing the reader on what has happened. When science fiction reaches the level of "War and Peace" in complexity, it is too much work to read. I recommend readers wait for the Reader's Digest condensed version to come out.
Rating:
Summary: Strung out story disapoints
Review: This book continues the story of the Streaker but continues
it almost beyond human endurance. End the saga and lets get
onto something more interesting. David Brin, please let them
be
|
