Rating: 
Summary: Half a great yarn
Review: This bizarre character-based space opera (a space soap-opera?), is filled with characters who simply do what they do. There are no heroes and no villains. The story, told from multiple points of view (whose pov you're now entering is clear from the chapter titles), involves a botched hostage rescue attempt and preparations for war, a planet-wide takeover by an AI. And, oh yes, a love story or two. The tech described is fascinating, too.
But reader, beware! Unfortunately this brief (340 page) book stops in the middle. You will need to read the "sequel" (aka volume 2) to learn the rest.
Rating:
Summary: A great sci-fi high-tech/space opera!
Review: This book almost stands alone due to the fact that it combines everything true sci-fi fans love in books from the super high tech bordering on the cyberpunk, to the very tense and very human element regarding the struggles of some of the greatest space operas of our time. It definitely ranks with "Foundation", "Ringworld", "Childhood's End", "I,Robot", "2010", "Rendezvous with Rama", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Neuromancer", "Virtual Light", "Mona Lisa Overdrive", "Snow Crash", "Cyber Hunter" and many more. Great read!
Rating: 
Summary: Half a story does not good value make.
Review: This book doesn't really stand out amongst it's peers, although it manages to hold its own up to a point. That point is in the middle of the story, which just happens to be the end of the book. This could not stand on its own under any circumstance. If it were 1500 pages, like Hamilton's Night's Dawn books, that might be excusable but as each of the first two books in this series are barely 300 pages, it seems that either the publisher and/or the author are taking advantage of the buying public. The most annoying aspect is that all the really good parts of this story are in the second book so my advice would be to skip this and go straight to KILLING OF WORLDS. It has enough of a brief in the prologue to get you up to speed.
Rating:
Summary: Superlative SF
Review: This book is full of surprises. It starts out by putting you in a setting you think is familiar, and then with one sentence it puts the entire scene in a completely different context, eliciting a "What? Oh, wow!" response. There are many ideas we don't often encounter - a symbiant giving everlasting life after death, complex laws expressed as a sort of hologram facilitating understanding, the proposition that artificial intelligence is the natural state of a planet's electronic data flow and requires deliberate acts to supress, and much more.Such concepts are not nearly enough to glue me to a book, however. I found the characters very human and the protagonists entirely sympathetic. In addition, the politics invented in the risen empire are fascinating and entirely plausible. Westerfeld displays considerable thoughtfulness in analyzing and presenting the repercussions of the precepts upon which the book is founded. Human nature seems very well represented. All this together in one book makes a sort of masterpiece for me. Typically I don't enjoy this sort of science fiction, "space opera," but this book stands head and shoulders above the typical book of this type. In fact, I'd have to rate it as one of the most absorbing science fiction books I've ever read! It does end in a cliff-hanger, and I'm very glad the sequel is scheduled for release in October. I'd say get it now while the gettin' 's good, and don't waste any time time buying the sequel when it's available.
|
