Earth Made of Glass

Rating:
Summary: Uplifting, shocking, exciting, devastating - Brilliant
Review: Previous reviews have accurately gone into details about what happens in the book, so I shall try to avoid that. I will say this book provides an extraordinary study of hatred and bigotry on one hand & reconcilation and hope on the other.

The conflicts the characters go through while dealing with all these emotions were wrenching for this reader, but I ultimately came away with a huge appreciation for the brilliance of John Barnes' writing.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing sequel to "A Million Open Doors."
Review: The one thing that you can unequivocally say about John Barnes is that he has exciting ideas. Great, wonderful concepts that if properly executed would form some classic sci fi novels. The disappointing part is that he tends to fall flat on his face when it's time for execution. Especially disappointing are his endings and how he tends to rush through them.

The concepts of A Million Open Doors were very promising. Humanity spreading out and colonizing worlds. Loss of communication between the colony worlds. New technology making instanteous travel possible. Earth Made of Glass is based on these same concepts, with a subplot of a marriage somehow gone wrong tied in. It's with that whole subplot that this story degenerates from an exciting tale of cultural prejudice and how technology is stirring up the pot into a story of how two people can no longer relate to each other. I'm not saying that this doesn't belong in a sci fi story. I'm saying that Barnes' inability to execute that subplot well drags the entire rest of the book down the drain.

I thought the first 100 pages of this book were GREAT! Very exciting, getting to learn about new cultures and how the instantaneous travel technology was affecting their relations. Then, Barnes goes into his standard "I will philosophize them relentlessly and they will understand the world better" mode. For example, three pages of the prophet Ix explaining while it is better to love rather than to hate is a bit much.

I wish that Barnes would collaborate with someone who would teach him to take himself a little less seriously. Also, it would be great if he could get an editor who would correct his grammer and style. My pet peeve, in addition to the grammer gaffs noted in other posts, is that Barnes uses parentheses in the speeches given by characters... how the heck does that make it past an editor? We're not talking about a character whispering an aside to someone during his conversation -- we're talking about an integral part of a speech given by a character!

All in all, the most disappointing part of this novel is the rushed ending. Barnes rolls out all kinds of different technology, revelations about the personal lives of characters, etc, etc in the last few pages to wrap up some dilemmas.

I love that Barnes doesn't take the easy way out for his characters -- not everything is beautiful in their lives at the end of the book. I just wish that he could do a better job in writing about his ideas.

Rating:
Summary: So much potential, such disappointing execution
Review: The one thing that you can unequivocally say about John Barnes is that he has exciting ideas. Great, wonderful concepts that if properly executed would form some classic sci fi novels. The disappointing part is that he tends to fall flat on his face when it's time for execution. Especially disappointing are his endings and how he tends to rush through them.

The concepts of A Million Open Doors were very promising. Humanity spreading out and colonizing worlds. Loss of communication between the colony worlds. New technology making instanteous travel possible. Earth Made of Glass is based on these same concepts, with a subplot of a marriage somehow gone wrong tied in. It's with that whole subplot that this story degenerates from an exciting tale of cultural prejudice and how technology is stirring up the pot into a story of how two people can no longer relate to each other. I'm not saying that this doesn't belong in a sci fi story. I'm saying that Barnes' inability to execute that subplot well drags the entire rest of the book down the drain.

I thought the first 100 pages of this book were GREAT! Very exciting, getting to learn about new cultures and how the instantaneous travel technology was affecting their relations. Then, Barnes goes into his standard "I will philosophize them relentlessly and they will understand the world better" mode. For example, three pages of the prophet Ix explaining while it is better to love rather than to hate is a bit much.

I wish that Barnes would collaborate with someone who would teach him to take himself a little less seriously. Also, it would be great if he could get an editor who would correct his grammer and style. My pet peeve, in addition to the grammer gaffs noted in other posts, is that Barnes uses parentheses in the speeches given by characters... how the heck does that make it past an editor? We're not talking about a character whispering an aside to someone during his conversation -- we're talking about an integral part of a speech given by a character!

All in all, the most disappointing part of this novel is the rushed ending. Barnes rolls out all kinds of different technology, revelations about the personal lives of characters, etc, etc in the last few pages to wrap up some dilemmas.

I love that Barnes doesn't take the easy way out for his characters -- not everything is beautiful in their lives at the end of the book. I just wish that he could do a better job in writing about his ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven but great successor to "A Million Open Doors"
Review: This book is a successor to "A Million Open Doors" with continuing characters: Giraut Leones, Margaret Leones, and Shan (chief of their agency which wants to bring together all the 1000 world societies to meet the aliens whose ruins they keep finding). Giraut and Margaret are on a new world, a high-gravity, hot, hostile environment with two cultures who hate each other. There are two major plots going on at once. In the first, one of the societies had put up a Prophet named Ix who preaches peace between the two cultures. I am not easily impressed by such things, but I had tears in my eyes several times as I read about him and things he said. I thought it was as beautiful as some of Christ's parables. The other plot is about the difficult marriage Giraut and Margaret are having. Barnes ABSOLUTELY avoids any easy answers, and I was impressed with the whole work. The uneveness problem arose from a few things: (1) the plot took a while to get interesting, maybe 100 pages; (2) there are frequent non-grammatical constructs of a certain type: "...to Margaret and I...," for example, and it is a little annoying. But the man is a genius in writing a moving story!

Rating:
Summary: Uneven but great successor to "A Million Open Doors"
Review: This book is a successor to "A Million Open Doors" with continuing characters: Giraut Leones, Margaret Leones, and Shan (chief of their agency which wants to bring together all the 1000 world societies to meet the aliens whose ruins they keep finding). Giraut and Margaret are on a new world, a high-gravity, hot, hostile environment with two cultures who hate each other. There are two major plots going on at once. In the first, one of the societies had put up a Prophet named Ix who preaches peace between the two cultures. I am not easily impressed by such things, but I had tears in my eyes several times as I read about him and things he said. I thought it was as beautiful as some of Christ's parables. The other plot is about the difficult marriage Giraut and Margaret are having. Barnes ABSOLUTELY avoids any easy answers, and I was impressed with the whole work. The uneveness problem arose from a few things: (1) the plot took a while to get interesting, maybe 100 pages; (2) there are frequent non-grammatical constructs of a certain type: "...to Margaret and I...," for example, and it is a little annoying. But the man is a genius in writing a moving story!

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing sequel to "A Million Open Doors."
Review: This one has none of the charm of its predecessor, and the central conceit of the book -- that humans are populating the galaxy with designer cultures concocted by scholarly fanatics -- here seems much less believable. Our heroes, Giraut and Margaret, are assigned to an inhospitable planet to defuse a cultural war, but they mostly just kill time while events take place around them, and their marital problems make a dreary subplot, hinging as they do on a "surprise" that most readers will see coming a long way off.

Rating:
Summary: The Moon Moth cont'd? Hmm.
Review: Who is John Barnes? Is he Neal Stephenson? Harry Harrison? William Goldman? Jack Vance? Andre Norton? Robert Heinlein? Kim Stanley Robinson? I'm confused. Well, in any event, he knows how to write, even if in this day of niche authors it's a little hard to pin him/her/it down. In this novel he puts on his Jack Vance cap (or actually, sort of a Keith Laumer/Retief cap (or, darn it, was that a Robert Asprin cap?)) and does his thing, very well. Highly recommended, a good read from an author who always provides a good read and a varied experience.