Marrow

Rating:
Summary: Rama Meets the Soaps
Review: Expectations were high for Reed's latest (his past work is, in my estimation, good, if not clever), and for 150 or so pages, those expectations seemed about to blossom. The last 2/3 of this book, however, is confused and ultimately forgettable. Reed's ideas are excellent in conception, very poor in exposition. The Clarke Rama is much, much more interesting. There is no "sense of wonder" in Reed's ship. Try as he may, Reed never deals effectively with scale, immensity and depth; he simply summarizes. The characters begin as intriguing but end as hackneyed,utterly dislikable, and made-for-TV-types.There is literally no portion of this book which creates any excitement...when it is tough for people to die, dangerous situations inherently become ordinary. Despite the casts'(I say "cast", because this is 70's soap opera stuff)immortality, by the 400th page, I was hoping for obliteration of each and every person. (In the end, the immortality motif may have been a mistake). This book is also filled with irritating typographical errors,which suggests that the publisher didn't care much more for Reed's manuscript than did this reader.This book didn't stay in my home for long; I didn't even bother to give it to charity.

Rating:
Summary: Only read if the only other book you have is a dictionary
Review: I have always been a science fiction fan, and even read the most boring books with atleast some moderate interest. However, I find myself skipping through more than half of this book. The plot it inself is higly unreasonable. The explanation are not sastifactory. Perhaps the author should focus a little less on the details of aliens and more on developing a better plot.

Rating:
Summary: Billion year old ship and other oddities
Review: I liked this book even though I tried not to. The writing style was engaging and the pace never bogged down. It certainly was better than the Rama books. In short humanity has achieved immortal status (it really is very hard to die). They discover a massive ship barreling across galactic distances. It is a derelict which they board and turn into a luxury liner.

Okay, so maybe you're yawning at this point, but wait. Who built this thing? Where did they go? Why did they send into deepest space? What happened? Those are the obvious questions, but there are no obvious answers. Maybe character development could have been better, but the characters did drive the action. In other words, it made sense as to the conclusions and actions they followed.

Of course, there is the pay off some 480 pages into the book, and I found it refreshing. It is certainly worth a few afternoons.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, a bit rushed
Review: I read everything Robert Reed publishes; but this book needed a little more proofreading and a little more re-writing. The ending was a bit rushed. The ideas were great and at least the first half was very grand, well-done and cinematic. The Stapledon-like scope of developing a complete new civilization from scratch was tempered by the claustrophobia of having it happen completely underground. Wow - weird. Like a lot of epics, the pacing was off at the end. What makes writers so much in a hurry to wrap things up when there are galaxy-shaking events occurring and millions of lives involved? Let's have a little respect...As to the psychological quirks of some of the characters, this needed to be looked into further. One would think that even if you had thousands and thousands of years for a personality flaw to fester, that the Captains would have developed nanos to correct such things. For those desiring more Marrow, there are a couple of short stories (whose events are referred to in this book) set in the same milieu in "The Dragons of Springplace."

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment from Reed
Review: I really love Robert Reed's short stories that have been appearing in all the SF magazines. He's a very good storyteller, and usually has really inventive concepts sprinkled throughout his stories. Marrow has no shortage of great ideas, with a huge ship that can carry a planet that no one knows about, humans that are essentially immortal thanks to nano-technology, and a horde of fascinating non-human alien species. They are all great ideas, but as other readers suggested, the characters really aren't that interesting. There are hardly any that I really cared about, except for a captain named Pamir, and he gets to take center stage about 3/4 through the novel. The first third of the novel is interesting, then Reed switches over to fast forwarding through 100s or 1000s years between chapters. At that point I wanted to stop reading, and only finished the book out of stubbornness. If you have other books on your nightstand, you might want to pass on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Skip this one...
Review: If you do buy this book, do not read before driving or operating heavy machinery... It is extremely boring and sleep-inducing... I suppose I should mention some specific points in the book as examples, but I can't, because nothing written in it will stay in your memory for longer than a couple of hours...

It was very difficult to finish, which was probably the same feeling held by the editor, as this book is riddled with typos and grammatical errors...

Anyway, stay away from Marrow...

Rating:
Summary: Too Much!
Review: It's an interesting idea: a space ship bigger than Jupitor, but that big idea wasn't enough. For one thing, this story was just too over blown. The time scale was inhuman and hard to relate to. After reading to the half way point I was telling myself that I'd never use this sort of longevity technology, because I'd end up like the characters and have an increadibly boring life! On and on and on... Reed likes exposition. Mr. Reed, if you're reading this, here's a little rule that most writers follow: Show, don't tell. As for characters: I can't say I cared of one of them. Not one! As I write this I'm thinking, what a waste, to take a pretty neat idea and do so little with it. Another problem I had was with the technology: it went no where fast. You think over tens of thousands of years they could have figured out how to do a lot more with this ship than they did. Maybe improve the engine technology or figure out how to communicate faster than light. It's as if humans got to this ship and that was the end of evolution, both technological, physical and spiritual. All and all I'm glad I bought it, because I had a long cross country flight and it helped me sleep.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable read
Review: Marrow by Robert Reed is an enjoyable science fiction encompassing a lot of well known territory in the genre. Reed does a good job in describing the world/ship that some of humanity has acquired and now pilots.

The strongest point in the story was the mystery of the builders. Reed did very well in his description of some of the alien life forms that inhabited his universe. Although it's always difficult to adequately describe the enormity of any object he succeeded in doing so to a large degree here.

I agree with one reviewer who stated the story is a bit rushed (especially near the end) and I got a bit tired of the endless "rebirths" that occurred. Possibly the most difficult aspect of Marrow to really buy was the fact that races would want to ride along as passengers. I could never really figure out why, since, a vacation spot the ship certainly wasn't.

All in all Reed does an above average job in Marrow. A talented Sci Fi writer, I hope that he takes more time in his next book to develop his ideas and storylines. Marrow is science fiction done well.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable read
Review: Marrow by Robert Reed is an enjoyable science fiction encompassing a lot of well known territory in the genre. Reed does a good job in describing the world/ship that some of humanity has acquired and now pilots.

The strongest point in the story was the mystery of the builders. Reed did very well in his description of some of the alien life forms that inhabited his universe. Although it's always difficult to adequately describe the enormity of any object he succeeded in doing so to a large degree here.

I agree with one reviewer who stated the story is a bit rushed (especially near the end) and I got a bit tired of the endless "rebirths" that occurred. Possibly the most difficult aspect of Marrow to really buy was the fact that races would want to ride along as passengers. I could never really figure out why, since, a vacation spot the ship certainly wasn't.

All in all Reed does an above average job in Marrow. A talented Sci Fi writer, I hope that he takes more time in his next book to develop his ideas and storylines. Marrow is science fiction done well.

Rating:
Summary: Worlds within worlds
Review: Marrow by Robert Reed is one of the best SF novels I've read all year. It is quintessential SF, full of brave ideas and bold speculations.

A giant starship enters the Milky Way. Where did it come from? Projecting its trajectory backwards gives no indication at all of its origin. It is an old ship - some evidence suggests that it is billions of years old. It seems to have been constructed from a Jupiter type planet; there are many, many miles of corridors and chambers hewn out of the solid rock. And they are all cold, deserted and empty. It seems almost as though there has never been anyone on the ship in its long, cold, lonely journey across time and space.

A crew of humans investigates and takes over the ship. Genetic engineering has assured them of near immortality and they determine to take the ship on a journey through the galaxy, picking up passengers as and when they wish (charging a suitable fee of course) for the ultimate sight seeing trip.

For thousands of years all goes well, but as the main part of the story opens, a group of senior officers have vanished as they set out to explore an enigma - the planet they call Marrow which they have discovered isolated in the heart of the ship. Well mapped and explored though the ship is, it seems that it still has mysteries to be investigated.

For more than five thousand years they are marooned on Marrow, forced to build a civilisation from scratch, forced to cope with dissension and mutiny, rebellion and heresy.

After this time of trial and tribulation, they return to the ship that abandoned them to Marrow. They are lean and mean, hardened and tempered by their experiences, and the ship's somewhat decedent crew are easy prey to their ferocity. But the ship, and Marrow and even their own people still have surprises in store for them.

The sheer scale of the canvas is awe-inspiring. The vastness of space and time has seldom been more evocatively invoked, and neither has the minutiae of domestic politics and power plays - the novel spans the whole spectrum of human endeavour. It is utterly gripping.