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Review Conjunction, what's your function?
May. 7th, 2009 09:40 amHey,
So I just finished up another book (I started it while I was on vacation). It was the end of a trilogy and it had a pretty good payoff.
The book is Grand Conjunction by Sean Williams. It's the concluding book of his Astropolis series which is preceded by Saturn Returns, and Earth Ascendant.
The story so far: Imre Bergamasc was reconstituted from a destroyed backup copy of himself just before galactic civilization was crippled. Wandering the universe at relativistic speeds, he attempts to figure out what's going on. He discovers that another version of himself might be responsible for the attack (or at least have some interest in keeping it going). Eventually, Imre decides to rebuild galactic civilization and winds up ruler of the galaxy (sort of). This puts him in contact with an unusual ally and after a few more long trips to investigate where the attack started, he abdicates the throne to go after himself more proactively.
So the book opens with Imre getting pulled from a trap and reunited with his friends. Another half million years have passed since he left and there've been a lot of changes. But now Imre has the info he needs to track down and confront his other self.
This book really winds up with meditations at the personal level on memory and identity and at the macro level on evolution of species and the universe as a whole. It's really in the last third of the book that the big ideas get unpacked, but they come with lovely gift wrapping so it's ok that they took some time getting to it. The book also revisits an issue that I thought was poorly handled in the first book, but it was really just something unfinished and the last book takes that old awkwardness and uses it to drive character development.
Overall, the series is pretty good. It's not a super-action adventure kind of book, but it's never plodding or boring and I'm becoming more enamored of SF books where FTL isn't a possibility.
later
Tom
So I just finished up another book (I started it while I was on vacation). It was the end of a trilogy and it had a pretty good payoff.
The book is Grand Conjunction by Sean Williams. It's the concluding book of his Astropolis series which is preceded by Saturn Returns, and Earth Ascendant.
The story so far: Imre Bergamasc was reconstituted from a destroyed backup copy of himself just before galactic civilization was crippled. Wandering the universe at relativistic speeds, he attempts to figure out what's going on. He discovers that another version of himself might be responsible for the attack (or at least have some interest in keeping it going). Eventually, Imre decides to rebuild galactic civilization and winds up ruler of the galaxy (sort of). This puts him in contact with an unusual ally and after a few more long trips to investigate where the attack started, he abdicates the throne to go after himself more proactively.
So the book opens with Imre getting pulled from a trap and reunited with his friends. Another half million years have passed since he left and there've been a lot of changes. But now Imre has the info he needs to track down and confront his other self.
This book really winds up with meditations at the personal level on memory and identity and at the macro level on evolution of species and the universe as a whole. It's really in the last third of the book that the big ideas get unpacked, but they come with lovely gift wrapping so it's ok that they took some time getting to it. The book also revisits an issue that I thought was poorly handled in the first book, but it was really just something unfinished and the last book takes that old awkwardness and uses it to drive character development.
Overall, the series is pretty good. It's not a super-action adventure kind of book, but it's never plodding or boring and I'm becoming more enamored of SF books where FTL isn't a possibility.
later
Tom
