Book Review

Hey,

Just finished up Paradox by John Meaney. Meaney is a British author and Paradox is the first in a trilogy of books that's slowly making it's way to our shores. It gets a lot of high praise, but honestly...it's only so so.

Meet Tom Corcoragan (Honey! Let's change our last name to Corcoragan!), he lives on a planet orbiting a distant star. Humanity lives undergound in a society that's, quite literally stratified. The Lords live near the top and the dregs live at the bottom. Tom lives lower down. Then one day a mysterious woman gives him a mysterious crystal that imparts little stories to him as he solves increasingly complex paradoxes (oh yeah, everyone in this world is real big on math, even the downtrodden). A wild series of events take him from the bottom to the top to the bottom and back again.

So it's one part The Diamond Age, one part Ender's Game, one part Horatio Alger, and just a smattering of some other stuff. And really, it's all only so-so. It certainly reads well enough and it doesn't end in a cliffhanger for book 2, but it never really kicks into high gear and for all its mathematical flirtations, it always shies away from doing anything cool.

I wouldn't rush to put it on my must-read list.

later
Tom

Book Review

Hey,

Just finished up Paradox by John Meaney. Meaney is a British author and Paradox is the first in a trilogy of books that's slowly making it's way to our shores. It gets a lot of high praise, but honestly...it's only so so.

Meet Tom Corcoragan (Honey! Let's change our last name to Corcoragan!), he lives on a planet orbiting a distant star. Humanity lives undergound in a society that's, quite literally stratified. The Lords live near the top and the dregs live at the bottom. Tom lives lower down. Then one day a mysterious woman gives him a mysterious crystal that imparts little stories to him as he solves increasingly complex paradoxes (oh yeah, everyone in this world is real big on math, even the downtrodden). A wild series of events take him from the bottom to the top to the bottom and back again.

So it's one part The Diamond Age, one part Ender's Game, one part Horatio Alger, and just a smattering of some other stuff. And really, it's all only so-so. It certainly reads well enough and it doesn't end in a cliffhanger for book 2, but it never really kicks into high gear and for all its mathematical flirtations, it always shies away from doing anything cool.

I wouldn't rush to put it on my must-read list.

later
Tom