Helpful Score: 2
Excellent! Complicated to start with in but once you get all the threads it grabs you and holds your attention. I'm looking for the next one on my wish list. Excerpt from back-The year is 2062, Jenny is a month shy of fifty and her artificially reconstructed body has started to unravel. But she is far from forgotten. A government scientist needs the perfect subject for a high-stakes, dangerous project and he thinks Jenny is the one.
Helpful Score: 1
I finished this book and did go on to the next in the series but.... the characters were not very well fleshed out. The author leaves you guessing a lot. Worth reading only if you don't have something else in your tbr pile.
Drugs, gangs and Internet warfare run rampant in Bear's ambitious debut novel, an SF thriller set in 2062. Jenny Casey, a former Canadian special forces warrior who's half-machine as the result of an accident years earlier, is living in Hartford, Conn., when a scientist working in need of the perfect subject for a high-stakes virtual-reality project puts Casey in his sights. Casey becomes a pawn in a furious battle waged in the corridors of the Internet, on the streets of battered cities and in the complex wirings of her half-manmade nervous system. As she approaches her 50th birthday, Casey manages to maintain a good sense of humor, a trait unfortunately lacking in the rest of the cast, which includes an old flame, a gangster named Razorface and a female ex-con who befriends the heroine. Bear's often jagged prose ("We disembark in Brazil, which has the distinction of being one of several countries I've been shot at in. Shot down over, even") suits the frequent, at times confusing narrative jumps between the virtual and real worlds. Though readers may have difficulties following this sometimes chaotic story, advance praise from such SF pros as Mike Resnick, Richard Morgan and Peter Watts should ensure a strong start.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW
Near future is a very difficult genre to get right. But Elizabeth Bear has created a really scary world that looks entirely possible. There are nasty corporate types, weasely politicians, and some really vicious criminals who populate this book. In the middle of it is one really great main character by the name of Jenny Casey. It is worth reading the book just for her. What a great book.
