Rating: 
Summary: One great read
Review: I highly recommend this book. It truly is a great read, in fact once you start this book it is hard to put it down. It has all the elements a great story, excellent character development, and a conspiricy that will blow your mind. To top it off it the geek factor is off the scale with the confluence of nano technology, and software engineering. Another point worth mentioning is the references to the geography of eastern massachussetts, it is easy to envision the characters travelling around Cambridge, Boston, and the western suburbs.
Rating: 
Summary: Good start, but its all downhill from there....
Review: Mr. Sundeman seems very influenced by the SF writer Philip Dick. Both Dick and Sundeman walk a very uneasy line between prophet and madman. The extremely detailed descriptions of the nanotech in the book really don't work right for me, and the antagonist, Marty, is given near-omniscence for no good reason other than to make him scary (he can predict earthquakes, for no reason ever adequately explained.) I really had high hopes for this book, since I had read the first 13 chapters on line, and thought they were great stuff. Unfortunately, near the end, it sort of degenerates into the type of thing you hear when you get trapped into chatting with street people. But the first half, and the bits dealing with the Tech industry, are spot on.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging!
Review: I really enjoyed this book - a quick start got me right into it after just a page or two! As a computer programmer, I really related to the computer side of things. And I enjoyed seeing the excitement in the genetics side of things. A nice marriage of technologies for this interesting story. I was also very glad to see technically (and otherwise) strong female characters ... . I wouldn't have bought the book if my friend weren't with the author at the recent USENIX conference. Don't get turned off by the title or cover of the book (which struck me as possibly too "religious" for me) - it's a real page-turner! There seemed to be a somewhat quick solution at the end of the story and some loose threads but I suppose that's the Jurrasic Park way to keep things open and scary for the future of what might be left behind or still to do. There were some typos in the printing but don't let that stop you - I look forward to your next book Mr. Sundman!
Rating: 
Summary: Paranoid Page-Turner!!
Review: This book is a far-fetched story about mad geniuses, cutting edge technology, world domination and a couple of lovable misfits (computer geeks, at that) who try to thwart them. In broad daylight, you know it can't happen, but after dark you're not so sure. I couldn't put it down. It's the book Neal Stephenson and Robert Ludlum might have written if one of the evil geniuses of this book had cloned them into one consciousness. One caveat: the first printing is full of typos. If you have the option of second printing, full price, and first printing, used, go with the second printing.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: This book was Great! It reminds me of Neal Stephenson's early work. I hate to use cliches, but I just couldn't put it down! This book was tight, fast paced, and had a really good grasp of how the computer industry feels and works from the inside. I never would have known about this book, but at the last Usenix Technical conference in Boston, there was this one table set off to the side of the entrance to the vendor displays, very different from the flashy booths from NetApp and Oreilly. With his hand-lettered signs, he looked kind of like a crazy man, so I approached with some trepidation. But he wasn't crazy, and his book, which he was trying to sell to the technical people there at the conference (and I bought), turned out to be _really_ good! So, I hope he writes more. The author was really a nice guy. Buy his book, and hopefully he will! This book was really fun.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Enjoyable Book
Review: A rarity - good techno-geek type sci-fi with characters that aren't walking, talking cliches. This is exactly the sort of thing that we need much more of in sci-fi. Sundman's work deserves to be supported (and not just moral support - buy this book.)
Rating:
Summary: Great book on many levels
Review: Acts of the Apostles is a great book on many levels. In terms of the lowest common denominator of fiction, as pure entertainment, it works quite well. It is hard to stop reading once you've started. It is the type of book that one could quite easily imagine as an adventure movie. But this book goes far beyond entertainment. It takes a look at some of the issues around the advances/convergence of computing and biology, and the potential or even inevitable ways that these technologies can endanger human culture. It operates from a premise of healthy and realistic suspicion of the stewards of these technologies. Though some could from a far distance tag this as conspiracy theory, there is little in this fiction that doesn't have a similar precedent in documented history. The dangers of which Sundman writes are real. Perhaps some of the real world references are a bit too recent for the comfort of the few who control mass publishing Today, hence the self-published nature of the book, but this is metaphor/fiction about the current state of things and the references to recent history and real-world figures/events empowers it to a far greater impact on the reader than if it were set in, say, 1948. Of course had it been set in 1948 it would have been a movie by now. I also enjoyed the many detailed references to real world things, anyone who has worked in programming, or worked in Silicon Valley, will appreciate the details; but this dimension is subtle enough that other readers will not be left out. Best fiction I've read in a long time, the only fiction I've read with any perceptive view of recent history (i.e. the past 15 years). Buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read!
Review: I bought a copy of "Acts" a few weeks ago at the MIT student center, and just finished the book. I just wanted to say that it was one the best, creepiest, most engaging novels that I've read in the last few years. I was also delighed to see the level of technical detail and accuracy in this novel -- although I was a little horrified to read about VLSI and ALUs when I picked up the book during finals week, in a vain attempt to avoid studying that same material in my computer architecture class this term!
Rating:
Summary: Four kinds of good
Review: This book is four kinds of good. First, it is a good fictional illustration (and anticipation) of the nanotechnology fears that Bill Joy was writing about in his famous Wired article, "Why the future doesn't need us." The plot? Gulf War Syndrome is the result of some nanotechnology experimentation on soldiers during that conflict... [Author Sundman and Joy also share a history of employment by Sun.] Second, and more importantly, it is a pretty good first novel in the international conspiracy suspense action thriller genre (not easy to do), although we might further class it a geek action suspense thriller, since its protagonist is a programmer. Third, it is somewhat of a roman a clef, which provides extra entertainment as you compare its fictional world with the real world. And fourth, it is a very intelligent satire as well, reminiscent of the Terry Southern of Dr. Strangelove. Sundman understands that technology and science are not the bad guys, it is the drive of international and worldwide control of markets (read people) that is just too tempting for the occasional powerful plutocratic megalomaniac. The hero, Nick Aubry, is a man of our time: "Once upon a time Nick thought he knew what mattered to him. He would have said the meaning of his live came from taking part in the redefinition of human nature..." Elsewhere a sympathetic scientific character, Dieter, muses: "With this technology all things would become mutable: oil spill would become fish food, smog would become clean air, the cystic fibrosis gene would become sound. Imagine: the dying child lies on the hospital bed, a simple injection into his blood, and lo, behold the child arise and walk..." Everyone is optimistic and positive. However, one character, Monty Meekman, is the evil plutocrat who wants to rule the world by using a bacteriophage to gain control the minds of everyone in the world, to literally create an overmind that is his to control. Talk about dominant operating systems! Nick and some honorable characters fight back, but the news is not good. Anyway, the future is (quite literally) black. This book is an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" for the new millienium.
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic read
Review: I picked up this book after reading an online review, a rare thing for me, and I loved it. It had just the right combination of new ideas, real characters, and a torrid pace to make it a must for my Christmas book list. Sunderman gives one thing that is rare: a really new combination of ideas. Most of the thrillers and technologically based books that I read nowadays are rehashed versions of old ideas that I was exposed to when I was 12. Not this book. Sunderman gives a (frightening) exposition of a possible future extrapolated from current trends. Buy it, read it, share it.
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