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Review made of book
Jun. 5th, 2008 12:14 pmHi,
So I just finished up Earth Made of Glass by John Barnes. It's a sequel to A Million Open Doors which was good enough to encourage me to take a second go round.
In the Thousand Cultures setting, mankind colonized the stars and then went insular. Then the springer (aka a telportation device) was built and now humanity is pushing out and reconnecting with its various colonies. The problem is that all the wildly divergent cultures now have to come to terms with one another. Giraut Leones works for the Office of Special Projects and it's his job to help newly contact Cultures get their act together so they can join Humanity as a whole.
This time, he and his wife, Margaret, have been sent to Briand which is a hellhole of a world populated by Tamils and Maya who are at one another's throats. The Tamil are arrogant and the Maya are reclusive and opaque.
I really enjoyed the book on a number of different levels. The details of each culture is interesting and the efforts to defuse their conflict is mostly handled through diplomacy instead of violence. No one is an obvious bad guy aside from humanity's general flaws as a species. There are meditations on culture and spirituality and marriage and diversity and unification. In fact, I'd probably say the sequel was a stronger novel than the original, which is usually really tough to do. There were a couple of genuine surprises in the book too, which is also a good sign.
If you're looking for some very subtle futuristic adventure, this is a pretty good book.
later
Tom
So I just finished up Earth Made of Glass by John Barnes. It's a sequel to A Million Open Doors which was good enough to encourage me to take a second go round.
In the Thousand Cultures setting, mankind colonized the stars and then went insular. Then the springer (aka a telportation device) was built and now humanity is pushing out and reconnecting with its various colonies. The problem is that all the wildly divergent cultures now have to come to terms with one another. Giraut Leones works for the Office of Special Projects and it's his job to help newly contact Cultures get their act together so they can join Humanity as a whole.
This time, he and his wife, Margaret, have been sent to Briand which is a hellhole of a world populated by Tamils and Maya who are at one another's throats. The Tamil are arrogant and the Maya are reclusive and opaque.
I really enjoyed the book on a number of different levels. The details of each culture is interesting and the efforts to defuse their conflict is mostly handled through diplomacy instead of violence. No one is an obvious bad guy aside from humanity's general flaws as a species. There are meditations on culture and spirituality and marriage and diversity and unification. In fact, I'd probably say the sequel was a stronger novel than the original, which is usually really tough to do. There were a couple of genuine surprises in the book too, which is also a good sign.
If you're looking for some very subtle futuristic adventure, this is a pretty good book.
later
Tom
