Candle

Rating:
Summary: "But what about...NAOMI?"
Review: I'm gonna start with this: I like the book. I'll read it again, in a year or so, when I don't remember all of the words anymore. So, don't go not buying the book.

John Barnes' "Meme Wars" universe, which this book is set in, is an interesting future... but he's made it too SMALL. The "parents" of one of the main characters in this book are also the parents of the main character in _Orbital Resonance_, and they get killed in _Kaleidoscope Century_, and they're the ones who did the things that made... well, EVERYTHING... happen. Tying several different stories together into a single milieu is a neat idea, but this is a bit much; the real world is LOTS bigger than this.

Rating:
Summary: "But what about...NAOMI?"
Review: I'm gonna start with this: I like the book. I'll read it again, in a year or so, when I don't remember all of the words anymore. So, don't go not buying the book.

John Barnes' "Meme Wars" universe, which this book is set in, is an interesting future... but he's made it too SMALL. The "parents" of one of the main characters in this book are also the parents of the main character in _Orbital Resonance_, and they get killed in _Kaleidoscope Century_, and they're the ones who did the things that made... well, EVERYTHING... happen. Tying several different stories together into a single milieu is a neat idea, but this is a bit much; the real world is LOTS bigger than this.

Rating:
Summary: An unusual Post Cyberpunk novel of the near future.
Review: It's hard to easily categorize this novel, as it is certainly nothing ordinary or well known. It is set in the same fictional milieu as Orbital Resonance and Kaleidoscope Century, and for those who have read those novels, there is much to find that is familiar, everything about the setting, but nothing about the Plot. Orbital Resonance was a Coming of Age story, Kaleidoscope Century was an Anti-Hero Cautionary story. What does that make Candle?

Candle is a story about personal control, internal and external, and what it really means to be human in relation to whether a person actually controls their own destiny, or has their destiny controlled by others. These are deep subjects, and this novel is neither as fast paced as Kaleidoscope Century nor as sympathetic as Orbital Resonance. Instead it tries to point out that a person is not really a person unless they are themselves free of external control. This is more and more important in real world as various elements of society vie to control the minds of everyone they can in any way they can.

The book gets deeply into the minds of the central character and to some degree his opponent as well. It also showcases some of the effects of growing old out of a profession and a lifetime of activities based on youth and vigor.

For fans of the first two books, a variety of questions are resolved, but even larger ones are raised. I can't reveal more without revealing things that are left to the end of the novel, but it raises questions based things the other books have speculated will happen in the future.

Overall, I felt the book was excellent, but as I said, also quite different.

Rating:
Summary: A truly involving novel, hard to put down.
Review: It's the future, where everyone is at peace thanks to the One True universal mind control program - everyone except Lobo, the last outlaw. It's up to Currie to use his tracking abilities to bring Lobo out of the wilderness and back into the fold - instead, Lobo captures him and he finds himself disconnected from One True for the first time in decades - and forced to realize a terrible truth about the changed world. Involving and hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Needs more work
Review: John should take this back and work on it some more. The Kaleidoscope Century ideas are very meme-like in themselves and hypnotically lure this reader, but loose ends, confusing motivations and behavior,abrupt shifts in tone, and way-too-long folksy expositions abound here and should have been corrected. And far too much time is spent on two middle-aged guys digging holes and playing in the snow. I buy and read every John Barnes book, but the last three (including Finity and Earth Made of Glass)have not been up to the standards he previously set. Maybe authors should test-"screen" their new novels before a sample audience before release, as many film directors do.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but not much more
Review: Out of the mainstream SF writers to emerge in the last ten or so years, John Barnes has stood out for a number of reasons, notably his consistent quality (especially given how prolific he seems), his excellent storytelling abilities and his interesting extrapolations of new ideas without getting so far "out there" that he loses the reader completely. In a previous book "Kalidoscope Century", Barnes gave us an overview of his near future history, including a look at the "Meme Wars" where basically intelligent computer programs used people as pawns to take over the planet (that's oversimpifying by a bit, actually). In this novel Barnes takes us back to just after that time, where hunter Currie Curran lives with his wife in a world where the meme "One True" controls everyone through its program Resuna, adjusting thoughts and memories and emotions in order to make everyone more effective and happy. Currie used to hunt "cowboys", people who hadn't been "turned" by One True and lived independent lives on the edge of society. There's one still left called Lobo and Currie goes out to hunt him one last time. It doesn't go well and Currie ends up Lobo's prisoner with his link to One True missing and his copy of Resuna disconnected. Here the story actually begins as Barnes tries to use this as a backdrop to explore the meaning of individuality and what it means in a wrecked society that needs repairing, as well as showcasing his imagination. The problem mostly lies with the execution. After the initial rather thrilling sequence of Currie remembering the first hunt against Lobo and then going out and getting the guy again, the book sort of loses all momentum and stops dead while the two fellows swap stories about what they were doing during the Meme Wars. While Barnes can craft a good tale, these tales on the whole come off as rather static and it's hard to get any kind of suspense when you have two grown men drinking wine and sharing a bath in the name of male bonding. Some action starts to get generated towards the end but the ending itself pretty much comes out of nowhere and seems way too warm and cuddly as well as far too forgiving of a lot of things that Barnes himself brought up. All in all, somewhat disappointing given the premise, Barnes really doesn't make it as interesting as he could (as he's proved in the past) and that makes the book frustratingly uneven. Fans will probably enjoy it to some extent, since it's not bad, just average, but newcomers would be wiser to start with some of his earlier novels and work down from there.

Rating:
Summary: Good book. Could be deeper.
Review: Similar to 1984, the society in Candle has a totalitarian/dictatorship government. "Resuna," a governmental meme installed in everyone's brain, keeps everyone in the society happy and efficient. "One True" is the governmental head, or the dictator, that connects all the people in a vast cellular network through jacks in their brains. One True and Resuna came to control at the end of the "War of the Memes." They were created in order to unite society in a common goal to return the planet to its natural healthy state--a planet in which human and non-human (animal, plant, insects etc.) life could co-exist without one or the other being dominant.

Lobo, one of the main characters, has been hiding from being turned to One True and Resuna. The other main character in the story, Currie Curran, is sent out to capture Lobo to turn him. During the hunt for Lobo, Lobo captures Curran. After the capture, Lobo disables Curran's ability to connect up with One True and to use Resuna. In the meantime Lobo infects Curran with the "Freecyber" meme, a meme that is designed to refuse all other memes.

The book presents great theories and ideas and asks the question: Is a totalitarian or dictatorship government acceptable if the government truly is for the benefit of the people it is ruling? I wish Barnes had explored that point some more. I consider Candle similar to 1984 in the ideas presented about governmental control and society's continuation, but Candle, unlike 1984, has a pleasing ending. Overall a good book.

Rating:
Summary: Good book. Could be deeper.
Review: Similar to 1984, the society in Candle has a totalitarian/dictatorship government. "Resuna," a governmental meme installed in everyone's brain, keeps everyone in the society happy and efficient. "One True" is the governmental head, or the dictator, that connects all the people in a vast cellular network through jacks in their brains. One True and Resuna came to control at the end of the "War of the Memes." They were created in order to unite society in a common goal to return the planet to its natural healthy state--a planet in which human and non-human (animal, plant, insects etc.) life could co-exist without one or the other being dominant.

Lobo, one of the main characters, has been hiding from being turned to One True and Resuna. The other main character in the story, Currie Curran, is sent out to capture Lobo to turn him. During the hunt for Lobo, Lobo captures Curran. After the capture, Lobo disables Curran's ability to connect up with One True and to use Resuna. In the meantime Lobo infects Curran with the "Freecyber" meme, a meme that is designed to refuse all other memes.

The book presents great theories and ideas and asks the question: Is a totalitarian or dictatorship government acceptable if the government truly is for the benefit of the people it is ruling? I wish Barnes had explored that point some more. I consider Candle similar to 1984 in the ideas presented about governmental control and society's continuation, but Candle, unlike 1984, has a pleasing ending. Overall a good book.

Rating:
Summary: Typical Barnes
Review: The usual John Barnes goodness, set in what appears to be the same universe as Kaleidoscope Century (among others). Like those others, the talent and originality that caused some to hail him as the New Heinlein are marred by graphic depictions of extreme violence.

Overall, a very thought-provoking and ultimately uplifting novel - but I'll never lend it to my mother; the sick parts would make her cry.

Rating:
Summary: A good idea is NOT a good story
Review: There are many compelling ideas that are poorly explored in this novel. The theme of interaction between humans and "memes" is a great _idea_. Unfortunately, the author reveals no skill in writing a novel, and neither the plot nor the characters are convincing. By the end of the novel, I really don't care who succeeds or why.

The entire book is told in the style of a relentless past-tense infodump. An example: one of the characters tells of his memories as a six-year old child of the ecological disasters, wars, politics and unemployment lines in near-scientific detail... In another place in the book, he tells in incredible detail the memories of another man, including the background of other people with whom the other guy was acquainted. I would prefer some action.

The writing style in this book is hyper-immature. I don't know what the job of the publisher's editor is (Patrick Hayden from TOR), but I assume that if it entails anything more than running Word's spell checker on a manuscript, that the poor chap fell asleep at the wheel... It's not only that the style of this book doesn't work for me, but rather the implausability of someone with a meme-corrupted brain to be able to recall so many things in such great detail. That and, of course, the style sucks.

I've read the other reviews here, and I have to say, that I just don't get it. This book disappointed me at every possible turn. The story is neither convincing nor compelling, and though I'd love to read further explorations into the evolution of "memes" or something similar, it will have to be written by different authors, because I highly doubt that I will be reading any more John Barnes novels.