Rating: 
Summary: Frustrating initially, but ultimately satisfying
Review: For some reason Ken MacLeod insists upon withholding key information about (A) the time relationships between the two story lines of this novel, and (B) the background history of his fictional universe. Worse yet, I can't see that this obfuscation helps to move the plot along in any way. It just made this reader confused, hoping that the author would at some point deign to explain what's going on. He eventually does, and the book concludes in a satisfactory manner. But a couple of times I almost gave up and chucked it in my library's donation bin out of frustration.If you want a few hints that are not really plot spoilers:
1. Matt Cairns is the ancestor of Gregor Cairns.
2. The Matt Cairns storyline takes place in near future, and Gregor Cairns storyline takes place in a more distant future.
3. There's a hierarchy of intelligences in this fictional universe: our hominid cousins (the pithkies), humans, the saurs (intelligent dinosaurs), the krakens, the Grays, the gods (some sort of sentient colonial micro-organism). Pithkies, humans, saurs, and krakens all originated on Earth and were exported (over the eons) to the surrounding planetary systems by the gods, greys, and/or some other intelligent life form.
4. The immortality of the original cosmonaut crew is not explained until the end of the novel, and then only in passing. The implications are that everyone back on Earth are now immortal, too. (Will this be a key fact to know in the next novels in this series?) Never fear. Half way through this novel, most of your questions will be answered, and your enjoyment will begin to outweigh your frustration.
Rating: 
Summary: Cyber punk meets world making
Review: I suspect this is one of those series that gets better as you go along. The opening salvo in a space opera saga is always going to be difficult. There is so much world building going on that there is little room for the story. So the writer faces a challenge, does he produce something on the scale of fellowship of the ring, which is so large it will put many readers off? Or does he write something small enough to attract purchase, but which will never satisfy expectations. So this Author has gone for a small book as a sampler of things to come. And he has done an excellent job in that regard. The story jumps between two universes, a near future earth, and a distant planetary confederation. And the latter is the more interesting place, reptilian saurs who live thousands of years, Gigants and elegant Pithkies, star travelling merchant traders who are transported on ships belonging to giant squid, and planet bound humans who are somehow descendants of those in the near future earth thread. A lot of homage is paid to cold war politics, workable communism (as if) and Area 51. There are some good laughs for computer programmers in a world where an archeology degree may include a module on MS-DOS or Windows applications. Technologically this book brings nothing new to the table, and as a result has a certain comfortable familiarity that makes all the technology seem accessible. I think I'll invest in book 2, and see where it goes from there!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting ideas, not enough heart
Review: I tried to like this book, really I did. McLeod is clearly an intelligent, inventive writer who can create future worlds that are detailed and believable. (Well, except for Communist "Russkis" taking over Europe; by 2000 that scenario should have been discarded.) And I found many of his ideas fascinating: the evolved, sentient dinosaurs; the "Second Sphere" of humanity to which the lost tribes of man (and saurs) have been transported; the true story of the flying saucers of New Mexico. As I read, I fully expected to get sucked in to the story. . . and it never happened. I kept plodding along, working to understand the politics and technology, assuming this was a long stage-setting for what would be a great story. And you know what? Maybe it is! But by the time I got to about page 160, I decided I didn't care enough about the characters and their plight to keep going. It was fascinating, but it wasn't interesting (if that makes sense). I couldn't help but compare "Cosmonaut Keep" to another book I was reading at the time, "Trading in Danger", by Elizabeth Moon. In comparison, Moon's book is a rather simple, predictable story, but it has characters you come to care about, and you want to keep reading to find out what happens to them. That was simply not the case with "Cosmonaut Keep". Perhaps I gave up too easily, but you know, there are other books on my shelf waiting to be read. The emotional payoff to this book is not worth the intellectual investment.
Rating:
Summary: Cyber punk meets world making
Review: I usually don't like the genre of books that alternates scenes and characters every chapter, leaving you to trying to remember where you left off on each story. However, this book does it well and quickly. You know you're coming together on the two story lines about half way through and this makes each one take on more meaning. I enjoyed the cyber-punk, near future story line and loved the ancient mix of wonderful creatures and gods on the strange, new world. It's a quick and not too complex read, with interesting characters and happily 2 more books to follow. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.
Rating:
Summary: New Series for MacLeod: Still Excellent
Review: I've rapidly become a huge fan of Ken MacLeod's. I much liked his first four novels, which were all linked to each other, somewhat complexly. But it's nice to seem him branching out somewhat with _Cosmonaut Keep_. This book is set in an entirely different future, and instead of AI's, it features several different species of aliens. The author who seems most present as an influence on _Cosmonaut Keep_ is Poul Anderson: there are several direct echoes of Andersonian themes, and one or two passages that seem almost stylistic hommages to Anderson. Like all of MacLeod's books except his first, it's told in two timelines. After a mysterious prologue, which only makes sense at the end of the book, we are introduced to Gregor Cairns, a student on the planet Mingulay, and his fellow researchers Elizabeth Harkness and Salasso. Salasso is a saur: an intelligent dinosaur-like being. Elizabeth and Gregor are of different social classes: Elizabeth, it seems, is a "native", while Gregor is a descendant of the "cosmonauts", who arrived at Mingulay some centuries earlier from Earth, in a starship which is now unusable. Soon another starship arrives: this one bearing human traders from Nova Babylonia, traders who in some ways resemble Anderson's Kith (and Heinlein's Traders from _Citizen of the Galaxy_, and Vinge's Qeng Ho), though their starship is actually controlled by aliens called Krakens, who naturally enough are huge entities that live in water. Details about this future interstellar civilization, called the "Second Sphere", are slow to be revealed, and I won't say much here, but they are neat and clever and intriguing details. At any rate, Gregor soon meets a beautiful trader girl and falls in love: but all this is complicated by various personal issues, including the "Great Work" of Gregor's family, and the question of what the traders really want. The other timeline follows a Scotsman named Matt back in the middle of the 21st century. He's a manager of programmers: the actual programmers are either AI's or aging geeks who remember legacy code like DOS and Unix. He's got a thing for an American named Jadey who is involved with the Resistance movement in England: and before long she's giving him a disk with some very interesting information on it. At the same time, an announcement stuns the world: the (Communist) European Union has been contacted by aliens in an asteroid they've been studying. Soon Jadey is under arrest, and Matt is fleeing to Area 51, then to the asteroid, where they learn that the information Jadey had Matt smuggle out is plans for a spaceship and a space drive. All this is highly destabilizing to the world political situation, which teeters on the brink of chaos while the scientists on the asteroid try to talk to the aliens and build the spaceship. It's easy to see where this is going, given that it has to mesh with the other story, but it's still clever and suspenseful. This is a very good novel, one of the best I've read in 2000. It's got a nice, well-contained story, involving mainly Gregor and Matt's personal lives mixed with the Great Work (for Gregor) and with Matt's obvious destiny. At the same time this story is clearly a setup for potentially fascinating future books in its series. (The title page says this is Book One of Engines of Light.) It's full of nifty SFnal ideas. Behind the scenes, just barely hinted at, are some really scary implications, and some really well-done half-evocations of deep time. MacLeod's prose continues to improve: he has a habit of mostly just writing sound, clever, workable stuff, then every so often winding up to an emotional and even quasi-poetic peak. The characters are decently drawn, though not especially deep, and there is a certain sense that their romantic lives are resolved rather conveniently. (Which isn't to say necessarily happily.) Mostly, this is just good solid Science Fiction, with plenty of sense of wonder inducing ideas.
Rating: 
Summary: Massive Effort, But Still Falls Flat.
Review: If publishers were serious about their claim that the best style is one that is not noticed, Ken MacLeod would never have been published. MacLeod contorts the English language, in attempts to be witty, or perhaps iconoclastic, which invariably fall flat on their faces. His usage of alliteration is ludicrious. His style remains pretensious throughout, and most of the time unbearably so. In short, Cosmonaut Keep is a Herculean effort, in which MacLeod assures that the audience is always conscious of his effort.
MacLeod does do some things very well: his imagination is vivid, and his ability to describe the world that he has created is wonderful. His balance of narrative and dialogue is excellent, but his characters never have anything to say. The storylines that he creates are interesting, but the linkage comes too late to save the drowning plot.
If, as the cover proclaims, MacLeod represents a SF revolution unto himself, the genre is dead.
Rating:
Summary: MacLeod's Best Yet
Review: Ken MacLeod does an amazing job of combining real politics with great sense of wonder science fiction. Cosmonaut Keep, the first book in a new series, is his best book yet. The book does a great job jumping between the stories of two different timelines: one a near future Earth dominated by Russia, another an alien world humans share with various aliens. It even manages to add in some UFO mythology in an interesting (and realistic) way. I look forward to the next book in the series.
Rating: 
Summary: Another fine thinking human's space opera
Review: Like most of MacLeod's books, Cosmonaut Keep is told in two
alternating timelines. By far the most interesting story-strand is set
on the planet Mingulay, in a complex society of humans, saurs, krakens
and other sentients. The worldbuilding and backstory unfold very,
very nicely here, in ways that would be unfair to reveal -- much of
what's best in CK lies here, and I'll bet you'll have as much fun
reading it as I did. By contrast, the near-future alternate Earth, featuring a Red Europe
and a reactionary America, gets off to a slow start, and is likely to
irritate nonpolitical readers. But this stuff is at least intelligently
done, skimmable, and -- about 50 pages in -- finally starts to rock. But
I would have liked to have spent more time on Mindulay, the Second
Sphere, saur society, kraken ways -- and, I imagine, more of this will
be Coming Soon. I don't think I'm giving away too much by saying that Cosmonaut
Keep is a variant of the old Elder Races Rule the Universe shtick -- in
this one, Fermi's Paradox is enforced by stern Galactic Gatekeepers,
and woe to junior races who run afoul of the gods. They *hate* spam
-- and care about due process about as much as you do when you
spray Raid on an anthill.... Ah, here's a quote I can't resist, from Thomas Wright, the discoverer
of galaxies, written c. 1750 (courtesy of Freeman Dyson): "In this great celestial creation, the catastrophe of a world such as
ours, or even the total dissolution of a system of worlds, may possibly
be no more to the great Author of Nature than the most common
accident of life with us. And in all probability such final and general
doomsdays may be as frequent there as even Birthdays or Mortality
with us upon the Earth. This idea has something so Cheerful in it
that I own I can never look upon the stars without wondering that
the whole world does not become astronomers..." If this didn't influence MacLeod in writing Cosmonaut Keep -- well,
it should have! Other readers see Poul Anderson influences in CK -- what I saw were
David Brin touches, and explicit references to Hans Moravec
who, come to think of it, was a major inspiration for the AI Wars in
MacLeod's first four novels. And there's a welcome scattering of
short quotes from Golden Age classics -- a nice touch for the well-
read. Cosmonaut Keep is the first of a new series, "Engines of Light". Book
#1 comes to an adequate resolution, with plenty of hooks to prime
you for the next installment, Dark Light -- UK edition published in
November 2001. MacLeod's writing just keeps getting better, and I'll
happily put up with his hothouse politics to get to the amazing
inventions in his spectacular new universe-playground. Highly
recommended. And I should mention the wonderfully atmospheric cover art, by
new-to-me artist Stephan Martiniere, of the Nova Babylonia trader
starship landing at Kyohvic port, Mingulay. Bravo! Happy reading!
Pete Tillman
Rating:
Summary: Two stories twisted into one.
Review: Matt Cairns is in our near future, in the 21 Century when the European Space Agency makes first contact with aliens. Gregor Cairns is in our FAR future, is a exobiology student who must REDISCOVER the secrets of interstellar travel. The two stories have been woven together. The First Chapter starts off with Gregor, the Second with Matt and so on. The author is somewhat a tease, because right when something seems about to happen, right when some new piece of information is about to help answer an important question, he ends the chapter and starts a new one in the other story line!
Don't worry, the book is full of cool stuff. Smart squids, starships, REAL dinosaurs, Area 51 (Dreamland), tiny Gods, flying saucers, spies, cyberpunk and more. YES, he likes to deal with politics, but it is part of the setting, not thrust into our faces. If you enjoy mystery, alien races (that turn out to be less than alien) and high-tech in your Sci-Fi, this is the book for you!
Rating:
Summary: A Hipster Heinlein
Review: My rating's an average. The book is two stories in one, and the one set on Mingulay gets 4 stars. Mr. McLeod's description of a colonized world inhabited by humans and "saurs" (they get drunk and stoned together) and the briefly mentioned two other hominid species (imagine what dinosaurs might have evolved into had they had the chance), with traders from the stars passing through and the world's tech wearing out is fascinating (although you may feel that the romantic attachments Gregor Cairns goes through are solved rather smoothly). This part of the book is told in the odd-numbered chapters. Unfortunately the other story, told in, of course, the even-numbered chapters and narrated for the most part by Gregor's ancestor Matt, is a rehashing of Heinlein--and not done especially well (think "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" with cyberpunks and Deadheads instead of Libertarians and you sort of get the point). The author's notion that a resurgent Russia will gain control over the EU (something called an "oil war" is hinted at) is, to be charitable, bizarre; his economic theories aren't worth discussing; the by the numbers "up against the wall bureaucrats!" plotting is something we've all seen before, and done far more coherently. First of a trilogy.
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