Ghost Devices (The New Adventures Series)

Rating:
Summary: Douglas Adams meets Iain Banks' "the Culture"
Review: I enjoy the style of both authors, and found that Simon Bucher-Jones did well in providing a story with both humorous and thought-provoking societal and science elements.

Rating:
Summary: Ghost Devices
Review: I'm not going to rate this book any higher, just because of the terrific ending. It's just too arduous a journey til you get there.

Bernice Summerfield is the lead character of this novel, but she's lost in the shuffle, until the brilliant ending. Then she makes perhaps the biggest decision of her life. Well, it's more of an impulsive action, really; nevertheless, Bernice--now minus the Doctor, gets to do her own version of the whole Genesis-Of-The-Daleks-Do-They-Live-Or-Do-They-Die-By-My-Hand-I'm-Refering-To-The-Entire-Species shtick (by the way, that extended-hyphenated-slightly-humourous-heading-for-some-situation is typical of the author's somewhat annoying writing style...and Dave Stone's attempts are usually better. But I regress...). The species in question are the lizard-men (and women, I think, though I'm not sure there were any women reptilians, come to think of it!) of Canopus IV, who've maintained a religion around The Spire, named as such because it's very Spire-ish as it looms above anything else (our CN Tower is a toothpick by comparison). The Spire is apparently made of "futurite", encloses a beam of energy that allows lizard-priests to get messages from the future, and was left by the Canopusis' Gods. No one knows why the Spire was built (like, telling the future isn't enough??!!).

That's the sum-up; the actual plotting is bumpy and halfhazard, further sabotaged by the author's supremely arrhythmical style. Also, it's very wordy, even for a book. Something about Bernice and co. hopping off on a dangerous interstellar to finally confront the so-called "Gods", who turn out to have a time-and-universe spanning agenda that is so weird it involves the self-destruction of Their own solar system, plus a smart-alecky talking air vent. Meanwhile a few of Bernice's archeologically-inclined colleagues hold the fort 'round the Spire, ruffling the feathers (okay, scales--but after all, lizards do eventually evolve into birds, so the "ruffled feathers image almost works) of both religious and anti-religious reptile-dudes, and besides that, not doing much of anything (Bernice's space-trip to meet the Vo'lach is the better part of this unstable, jargon-ridden book).

The ending is four-star material, blessedly. It involves Time Paradox, and I always like a good Time Paradox, especially one that threatens to be infinite while creating multi-realities. Tie the paradox into the final explanation for the Spire and you have a tiresome book redeemed...somewhat. However, there is, in reality, an infinitely better variation of the same basic plot: it's called The Dreaming Dragons, and it's by Damien Broderick, which means you should read more Australian SF, and then get to Ghost Devices if you have time.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not Bucher-Jones' best
Review: The basic idea of Ghost Devices is brilliant, but it falters somewhat in the execution (something common to many of the post-Doctorectomy NAs). It's certainly not a bad book, but it's not the author's best; the MacGuffin in "The Death of Art" was just as good and the plotting was much smoother.