Engine City (The Engines of Light, Book 3)

Rating:
Summary: An unusual ending for an unusual species
Review: In retrospect, I suspect I should *not* have been surprised by the ending of the book; in a sense, the ending--and the coda which follows it--were set up in the very first book in the trilogy, "Cosmonaut Keep." The central theme of this book appears to be irony, from first page to last.

MacLeod has created a bizarre universe, populated with many different creatures, including saurs, krakens, selkies, and, perhaps the most alien of all, the eight-legged Multipliers. There's a lot of intriguing ideas jammed in here.

Unfortunately, all those ideas, in a book this short, mean that a lot of characters get short shrift. Likewise, the book isn't long enough to stand on its own; why certain characters behave the way they do doesn't really make sense unless you've read the previous two books. Thus, the series ends leaving a lot of questions (not the least of which is why the book is written in the present tense when, and only when, Matt Cairns is the viewpoint character).

All in all, though, if you've read the first two books, you'll probably want to read this one just to see how it ends. If you haven't, start with "Cosmonaut Keep" and "Dark Light" before reading this one.

Rating:
Summary: An unusual ending for an unusual species
Review: In retrospect, I suspect I should *not* have been surprised by the ending of the book; in a sense, the ending--and the coda which follows it--were set up in the very first book in the trilogy, "Cosmonaut Keep." The central theme of this book appears to be irony, from first page to last.

MacLeod has created a bizarre universe, populated with many different creatures, including saurs, krakens, selkies, and, perhaps the most alien of all, the eight-legged Multipliers. There's a lot of intriguing ideas jammed in here.

Unfortunately, all those ideas, in a book this short, mean that a lot of characters get short shrift. Likewise, the book isn't long enough to stand on its own; why certain characters behave the way they do doesn't really make sense unless you've read the previous two books. Thus, the series ends leaving a lot of questions (not the least of which is why the book is written in the present tense when, and only when, Matt Cairns is the viewpoint character).

All in all, though, if you've read the first two books, you'll probably want to read this one just to see how it ends. If you haven't, start with "Cosmonaut Keep" and "Dark Light" before reading this one.

Rating:
Summary: Not a strong finish....
Review: Ken MacLoeds books are usually a complex but ultimately satisfying read. The first two books of this trilogy fitted into that description but this third book, Engine City, missed the mark. I found myself skipping through pages which is something I usually never do. It seemed like this was a very disjointed finish to a story that had started out really well in books one and two.

I look forward to his next work...although may not a trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: The book reads like an afterthought rather than a culmination to an interesting trilogy. The plot seems more designed to finish the series than to build to a satisfactory climax and the last chapters bring in a deus ex machina that makes little sense. One gets the impression that Macleod became tired of the series.

Rating:
Summary: Quite satisfying ending to a fine series.
Review: This concluding novel in the Engines Of Light series just doesn't quite stand on it's own meriets, but should be read as the last part of the series.

This is definitely "hard" science-fiction, and therefore slow reading at times. But the concepts here are fascinating as such themes as flying saucers and alien abductions are woven together with the intermingling of life forms in a future interplanetary society. Quite highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Quite satisfying ending to a fine series.
Review: This concluding novel in the Engines Of Light series just doesn't quite stand on it's own meriets, but should be read as the last part of the series.

This is definitely "hard" science-fiction, and therefore slow reading at times. But the concepts here are fascinating as such themes as flying saucers and alien abductions are woven together with the intermingling of life forms in a future interplanetary society. Quite highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Incoherent, confused, disappointing
Review: Trilogies are hard. The most common pattern is a good start, a good to weak middle, and a weak ending. Macleod doesn't do that well.

The first book of this trilogy was an improvement on his previous writing, putting him almost at the same level at the earlier (weaker) books of Iain M Banks. By the second book he's slipped into the middle tier of writers, the third book sometimes reads like a satire of the first two. He seems desperate to find a way out of the story and finally just gives up.

Macleod shows signs of promise. He needs an editor, more discipline, and more practice. Stay away from the trilogies for a while.

As for you readers -- skip this book and skip the series.

Rating:
Summary: Solid conclusion to a neat SF trilogy
Review: _Engine City_ concludes Ken MacLeod's second novel series, together called Engines of Light. In the first two novels (_Cosmonaut Keep_ and _Dark Light_) we learned that an asteroid passing near Earth in the mid-21st Century contained intelligent nano-bacteria, who collectively had the intelligence of a god. These beings made available to an international team of cosmonauts a starship, which they took hundreds of thousands of light years to a planet called Mingulay. There they learned that they were only the latest of many waves of colonization of that area of the galaxy, apparently all at the doing of the gods. This "second sphere" was inhabited by humans from ancient Babylon, for example, and by humans from more recent historical eras, and by intelligent dinosaurs, and by other hominids such as pithkies (Australopithecus). Travel in the Second Sphere is dominated by starships run by intelligent giant squid (the Krakens) and by the saurs, but the new Cosmonauts have a starship, if they can only figure out how to navigate it. In the second book, having learned to navigate the Bright Star, they travel to nearby Croatan (home of the lost Roanoke colony), and there the politically active, long-lived, cosmonauts naughtily foment a rebellion, while also contacting the local gods, and learning some scary secrets about the gods, and about other 8-legged aliens.

In _Engine City_ MacLeod works diligently to knit together the various threads of the first two books. In fact, at times the book seems too busy, too full of new ideas only a few of which would have sufficed for a full novel. By the end, however, he does draw things to a fairly satisfying conclusion (only to blow it up again in a clever SF-referential last chapter -- not, though, a harbinger of further books in the series but rather something of a wink (or perhaps grimace) at the reader).

At any rate _Engine City_ involves the Bright Star and other new starships establishing a new trading culture, threatening the established hegemony of the kraken-controlled ships of Nova Babylonia. One of the most cynical of the old cosmonauts makes his way to Nova Babylonia to foment a new rebellion, on essentially Stalinist terms. The sinister 8-legged aliens turn up, offering immortality, but at what cost? The gods are provoked. A terrible war is threatened. In general, pretty neat stuff, but I felt the book was a bit rushed, and a bit too packed. I'd rather have focussed more on some of the individual characters. Still, MacLeod has definitely met his obligations to the series reader by answering all the questions he earlier raised.

Not a great book but a good one. I continue to eagerly buy MacLeod's new books as they appear.