Helpful Score: 3
I found this story so uninteresting it made me break my long-running rule that I had to finish every book I started. From the first few pages describing the "raid on Metz" to page 278, where I abandoned the story almost halfway through the book, the transitions between scenes were jarring in spite of the fact that the entire story is told from the viewpoint of a single character, and the author dances around innuendo about sexuality, intelligent crystals being mined for profit, a cybersphere that is barely identifiable from physical reality, and an AI that uses brain shunts in specially wired humans, to roam the physical world. It's a slow dance that hints at truth but delivers so slowly that by the time the author begrudgingly hands you the secrets you've stopped caring about 20 pages ago.
All of this serves as the backdrop of a murder mystery that takes place in what is essentially a coal mine.
All of this serves as the backdrop of a murder mystery that takes place in what is essentially a coal mine.
Helpful Score: 1
This turned into a very engrossing story, with many philosophical questions being raised about what constitues "human", issues of ethics and independence regarding AI's, and the struggle between acting on duty versus acting on one's conscience. And there's a very bizarre love story, too.
I have to admit that much of the science/physics was over my head, but I appreciated the gist of it, nonetheless. Reminded me of a hard-boiled, noir version of Tepper's After Long Silence, and also more generally of Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.
I have to admit that much of the science/physics was over my head, but I appreciated the gist of it, nonetheless. Reminded me of a hard-boiled, noir version of Tepper's After Long Silence, and also more generally of Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.
Helpful Score: 1
Well told story of the future involving A.I.s, high risk interstellar travel and bleeding edge scientific subjects. The sophistication of the physics is impressive yet doesn't overwhelm the story.
Helpful Score: 1
Masterful world-building. Fully formed set and setting painted with a maximum economy of brush strokes, peopled with three dimensional characters, some of whom can scarcely be called human but for the heart at their cores. Todays far frontier of quantum physics is the infra-structural under pinnings of entire interstellar civilizations, civilizations fast approaching a collision at the crossroads of history. In the center of that crossroad, used and abused to the point that she can barely tell who she is stands a soldier..
