Harvest of Stars

Rating:
Summary: A SWEEPING AND MOVING SAGA OF MAN'S FUTURE IN SPACE
Review: THIS NOVEL IS ONE THE MOST MOVING SF SAGAS I'VE READ. ANDERSON TAKES US INTO A THE FUTURE WHENEARTH IS RULED BY THE TYRANNICAL AVANIST GOVERNMENT. THE ONLY ONES WHO ARE RESISTING THEM ARE FIREBALL COMPANY HEADED BY THE UNFORGETTABLE ANSON GUTHRIE WITH THE HELP OF KYRA DAVIS, A BRAVE SPACE PILOT. THIS NOVEL'S SPECULATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SPACE TRAVEL ARE FIRST RATE.ANDERSON ALSO WRITES LYRICAL PROSE THAT MAKES HIS STORY LITERALLY SING.

Rating:
Summary: ambitious, but a bit muddled
Review: While it has been quite some time since I read Harvest of Stars, I still remember it very vividly. It is not the kind of book you can forget. The last part of the book is especially memorable. The language is vivid and poetic, the concepts mindboggling, the scale one of epic proportion...

However, when I first started reading the book, I had no idea that it would ever turn out the way it did. Not that that's necessarily always bad (I love being surprised). It's just that this book seems more like two stories rather than a single coherent tale... and the more interesting of the two stories only takes place in the last fourth of the book!

To begin with, the story starts out as a regular sci-fi adventure, with two "downloads" of Fireball Corporation's leader Anson Guthrie working against one another in a pitched battle for control (the "good" Guthrie with Fireball, of course, and the corrupted download being used by the government). There are some action sequences and chases (mostly involving Kyra, the female lead character who's actually one of the better heroines I've come across in hard SF) which take place within a fairly well realized future Earth. There's even a nice sort of space battle that happens, too. But then the conflict resolves itself rather quickly (and, might I add, anticlimactically), and then the book totally, completely, and utterly shifts gears into a wonderful story about man's life among the stars. While this was my favorite part, it felt totally unrelated to the rest of the book, came far too late in the book, and was not given nearly enough pages to realize its potential!

I liked this book, I really did. It was very ambitious, mind-boggling, entertaining, all that good stuff. However, it just didn't work well for me. I'd rather have seen Anderson write an entire novel devoted to the second plot than be misled so. Although I really enjoyed reading this, I felt like Anderson had been really unfair in holding out on us.

I've always been interested in reading the sequels to this novel, to see if he followed up on the ending like I wanted him to. Unfortunately, the books are incredibly hard to find. If it kills you not to be able to follow a saga through, you may not want to read this one, but I still say you should, even if for nothing more than the ending.

Rating:
Summary: ambitious, but a bit muddled
Review: While it has been quite some time since I read Harvest of Stars, I still remember it very vividly. It is not the kind of book you can forget. The last part of the book is especially memorable. The language is vivid and poetic, the concepts mindboggling, the scale one of epic proportion...

However, when I first started reading the book, I had no idea that it would ever turn out the way it did. Not that that's necessarily always bad (I love being surprised). It's just that this book seems more like two stories rather than a single coherent tale... and the more interesting of the two stories only takes place in the last fourth of the book!

To begin with, the story starts out as a regular sci-fi adventure, with two "downloads" of Fireball Corporation's leader Anson Guthrie working against one another in a pitched battle for control (the "good" Guthrie with Fireball, of course, and the corrupted download being used by the government). There are some action sequences and chases (mostly involving Kyra, the female lead character who's actually one of the better heroines I've come across in hard SF) which take place within a fairly well realized future Earth. There's even a nice sort of space battle that happens, too. But then the conflict resolves itself rather quickly (and, might I add, anticlimactically), and then the book totally, completely, and utterly shifts gears into a wonderful story about man's life among the stars. While this was my favorite part, it felt totally unrelated to the rest of the book, came far too late in the book, and was not given nearly enough pages to realize its potential!

I liked this book, I really did. It was very ambitious, mind-boggling, entertaining, all that good stuff. However, it just didn't work well for me. I'd rather have seen Anderson write an entire novel devoted to the second plot than be misled so. Although I really enjoyed reading this, I felt like Anderson had been really unfair in holding out on us.

I've always been interested in reading the sequels to this novel, to see if he followed up on the ending like I wanted him to. Unfortunately, the books are incredibly hard to find. If it kills you not to be able to follow a saga through, you may not want to read this one, but I still say you should, even if for nothing more than the ending.