Finity

Rating:
Summary: More than just a little weird.
Review: This is one of those books that just doesn't seem to be the right length. Some of the concepts would make great short stories, but stuffing everything into about 300 pages left a number of spots that either needed to be expanded on or left out.

While I can't say that I want my six bucks back, I also can't really feel comfortable telling all my friends that they should run out and buy this book. I can say that if you haven't read some of Mr. Barnes' other books, this is probably not the best one to start with.

Rating:
Summary: Not as Lame as "Mother of Storms"
Review: This is only the second book by Barnes that I've read, and as was the case with the first one, Mother of Storms, I enjoyed his writing when he was dealing with the science, but found it very lacking in everything else. While the characters were better developed in Finity, they were still not very compelling, and I had very little sympathy for any of them. Also, it's a pretty predictable book, and the while the science of alternate/parallel universes was well done, it's hardly a brand new idea.

I probably wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, except maybe just to pass a couple of hours on an airplane, without having to pay too much attention to what you're reading.

Rating:
Summary: confusing...unsatisfying
Review: This was one of the most confusing books I've ever read. Now don't get me wrong; I love books with plots and suspense and foreshadowing and all of that good stuff. I guess the problem I have with this one is that the plot and the ending aren't "worth" all the confusion in the first 3/4 of the book. While I admire the author for not falling back on a perfect little "happy ever after" ending, the ending he does give just isn't satisfying.

Actually, the style of this book reminds me a lot of the movie "Twelve Monkeys." If you don't adore twisted mind benders in your SF, don't bother with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Better than I expected
Review: Well, I didn't have high hopes for this one based on the reviews I read, but I decided to give it a shot anyhow. It didn't help that I knew something about the ending based on another customer's review! The story is driven by the concept of parallel dimensions and is something I have read about in Factoring Humanity by Robert Sawyer and Michael Crichton's Timeline recently, so it was all very familiar. Regardless, Barnes did a good job explaining. I think you can learn a little about quantum theory from the book. I though the first half of the book was great and really expected it might fall apart, but it didn't; it just got sort of slow. Any good sci-fi book needs to answer the mysteries it poses and I think Finity does a good job with this. I found only a few unanswered questions in my mind, but nothing major that disturbed my enjoyment of the book. Overall, it is an enjoyable read, and I would recommend it if you are interested in the "Many Worlds/Parallel Dimensions" concept.

Rating:
Summary: Competently executed; indifferent result
Review: While John Barnes has written a number of simply outstanding books (Mother of Storms, One for the Morning Glory), this Pohl-esque entry into the alternate worlds genre isn't one of them.

Finity gets off to a good start. The (first-person) narrator speaks in stilted, self-centered prose like, perhaps, a character from a R.A. Lafferty novel. It becomes apparent, after a while, that he inhabits a world that seems to have a changing past. Not only that but this changing past seems to be different for everyone. And then there is the matter of the United States having gone missing.

It's an interesting premise until it turns into a road trip. Then the story begins leaking steam. One of the characters turns out to be a red herring. (Or something very much like a red herring.) People you've just begun to know turn out to be expendable or not around for all that long for other reasons.

The mess is polished off with a couple of dream sequences that might have been adapted from the rendezvous of Picard and Kirk (well, not really, but ...). Quirks of physics and mathematics explain everything away.

Overall, underwhelming. Not a bad book to be stuck on an airplane with (which is where I read most of it) but there's better reading to be had. Much of it, in fact, with Barnes's own name on it!