Reviews Three

Hey,

I'm behind on telling you about my reading. So let's fix that:

First up, Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson. The ninth (and penultimate book) in his ten book series. The last one is due out early next year and if Mr. Erikson dies on me before then, I will personally hunt him down and kill him.

So yeah, we're on the 9th book of a 10-volume series where each volume runs 700+ pages. Trying to sum up would be an exercise in futility. Let's just say that I've kept up with this series and am determined to finish it out. I think the series is pretty good and you should check out Gardens of the Moon if you want to get started. Mr. Erikson takes pains to apologize that this book ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger, but seriously it isn't much worse than previous books where there were lots of unresolved threads hanging about but there was enough of a resolution that you could live with it. Here, you've got a lot more threads but it doesn't end mid-important action or anything.

For most of this series the meta-action has revolved around a Crippled God and his efforts to take over the world (and being foiled by others). Very early on, it was hinted that perhaps the Crippled God wasn't the worst thing in the world to worry about and in this volume that background threat becomes more and more apparent. I'll be interested to see how this one wraps up.

Next we have, The Quiet War by Paul J. McAuley. An interesting sci-fi book with an ending ambiguous enough that I can't tell if there's going to be a sequel or not....apparently their is. Minus a point for ambiguous endings then.

In this book, we've got Earth rebuilding after ecological collapse. The process is pretty far along and Greater Brazil has now set its sights on the outer colonies around Jupiter and Saturn. The fear is that the Outers are using genetic manipulation to shed their humanity. So Brazil sets out to bring them back into the Terran fold. Their main weapons in this fight are...genetically manipulated humans much like the Outers they rail against.

The story is told from several viewpoints although Sri Hong-Owen, one of Earth's leading gene wizards and Marcy Minnot, an environmental engineer sent to Callisto to help build a biome dominate. Sri wants the biome project to succeed so she can meet the mysterious Outer gene wizard Avernus even as she helps Greater Brazil build better soldiers. Marcy just wants to do her job and go home. Both of them will find themselves caught up in larger events that pull them in different directions and keep their goals tantalizingly out of reach.

It was a good read. I'm not sure if I'm instantly sold on picking up the sequel, but it was definitely enjoyable.

Finally, Blood of the Mantis by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is the third of the Shadows of the Apt series (I reviewed the first two: Empire in Black and Gold and Dragonfly Falling earlier). The author has announced an ambitious program of a new Apt book every six months. I'm pretty sure I don't want to keep up on this series anymore. It's not that it's bad. The writing is pretty strong and although the books are less and less independant of each other, it's just not working out for me. The real problem here is that I really like the central idea -- people have an insect totem that gives them special powers. So Ant-kindren can all communicate telepathically, Wasp-kindren can fly and shoot a magical blast, moth-kindren have Dream-magic, Beetle-kindren are master steampunk engineers and so on. I really like this central idea, but it just never seems to get enough attention. Rather, it's just like people have some bolted-on super-powers. I would expect to see more insect motifs and there just aren't. If anything the steampunk aspects get a lot more attention.

So I think I'm dropping my subscription to this one. I will say it's a great premise and the first book especially is worth reading for the concepts.

So that's what I've been reading lately
Tom

Reviews Three

Hey,

I'm behind on telling you about my reading. So let's fix that:

First up, Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson. The ninth (and penultimate book) in his ten book series. The last one is due out early next year and if Mr. Erikson dies on me before then, I will personally hunt him down and kill him.

So yeah, we're on the 9th book of a 10-volume series where each volume runs 700+ pages. Trying to sum up would be an exercise in futility. Let's just say that I've kept up with this series and am determined to finish it out. I think the series is pretty good and you should check out Gardens of the Moon if you want to get started. Mr. Erikson takes pains to apologize that this book ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger, but seriously it isn't much worse than previous books where there were lots of unresolved threads hanging about but there was enough of a resolution that you could live with it. Here, you've got a lot more threads but it doesn't end mid-important action or anything.

For most of this series the meta-action has revolved around a Crippled God and his efforts to take over the world (and being foiled by others). Very early on, it was hinted that perhaps the Crippled God wasn't the worst thing in the world to worry about and in this volume that background threat becomes more and more apparent. I'll be interested to see how this one wraps up.

Next we have, The Quiet War by Paul J. McAuley. An interesting sci-fi book with an ending ambiguous enough that I can't tell if there's going to be a sequel or not....apparently their is. Minus a point for ambiguous endings then.

In this book, we've got Earth rebuilding after ecological collapse. The process is pretty far along and Greater Brazil has now set its sights on the outer colonies around Jupiter and Saturn. The fear is that the Outers are using genetic manipulation to shed their humanity. So Brazil sets out to bring them back into the Terran fold. Their main weapons in this fight are...genetically manipulated humans much like the Outers they rail against.

The story is told from several viewpoints although Sri Hong-Owen, one of Earth's leading gene wizards and Marcy Minnot, an environmental engineer sent to Callisto to help build a biome dominate. Sri wants the biome project to succeed so she can meet the mysterious Outer gene wizard Avernus even as she helps Greater Brazil build better soldiers. Marcy just wants to do her job and go home. Both of them will find themselves caught up in larger events that pull them in different directions and keep their goals tantalizingly out of reach.

It was a good read. I'm not sure if I'm instantly sold on picking up the sequel, but it was definitely enjoyable.

Finally, Blood of the Mantis by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is the third of the Shadows of the Apt series (I reviewed the first two: Empire in Black and Gold and Dragonfly Falling earlier). The author has announced an ambitious program of a new Apt book every six months. I'm pretty sure I don't want to keep up on this series anymore. It's not that it's bad. The writing is pretty strong and although the books are less and less independant of each other, it's just not working out for me. The real problem here is that I really like the central idea -- people have an insect totem that gives them special powers. So Ant-kindren can all communicate telepathically, Wasp-kindren can fly and shoot a magical blast, moth-kindren have Dream-magic, Beetle-kindren are master steampunk engineers and so on. I really like this central idea, but it just never seems to get enough attention. Rather, it's just like people have some bolted-on super-powers. I would expect to see more insect motifs and there just aren't. If anything the steampunk aspects get a lot more attention.

So I think I'm dropping my subscription to this one. I will say it's a great premise and the first book especially is worth reading for the concepts.

So that's what I've been reading lately
Tom