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An Incremental Review
Oct. 5th, 2013 08:54 pmHey,
So I finished up The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White. It's a fun little book about the secret society that works in small ways.
Phil is an Incrementalist. He...or rather his memory is 1600 years old. He hops from mind to mind through time and along with the rest of the Incrementalists, he has access to the Garden, a metaphysical space that stores his memories and gives him access to the knowledge and memories of humanity. With access to the Garden comes the ability to "meddle" with regular people -- use the knowledge provided by the Garden to psychologically manipulate people to make changes in their lives. Small changes. Changes for the better. Large, ambitious changes have come at too high a cost and now the Incrementalists move in small ways.
Right now, Phil needs to find a new recruit. His partner Celeste has died and he needs to take her spike of memory and personality and shove it into someone else's head. He's chosen Ren, a UI design specialist. So they meet up, he makes the pitch, she agrees to join and then things start to get a little weird. Celeste has been plumbing the depths of her powers and she has big plans that go beyond a simple switch of bodies.
It's a fun little book. The chapters are short and clip along, alternating between Phil and Ren. Because Ren is new, there's scope for well-crafted info-dumps that explain the ground rules for being an Incrementalist and these are doled out in small amounts over the course of the book. Additionally, Celeste's efforts mean that even Phil has new stuff to learn so everyone is on a learning curve without huge amounts of exposition.
And threading through everything are the arguments -- when you have the power to change people's minds what do you do? How hard do you push? Where do you push? Can you only bother with little changes and let big stuff go undone? There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in this book and it's fun to tease it all out. Although the meat of the book is watching everyone's understanding of their abilities grow and shift, I'd be interested in sequel showing a larger operation, which you only get hints of in the book.
Anyway, a fun read about a friendly secret society.
later
Tom
So I finished up The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White. It's a fun little book about the secret society that works in small ways.
Phil is an Incrementalist. He...or rather his memory is 1600 years old. He hops from mind to mind through time and along with the rest of the Incrementalists, he has access to the Garden, a metaphysical space that stores his memories and gives him access to the knowledge and memories of humanity. With access to the Garden comes the ability to "meddle" with regular people -- use the knowledge provided by the Garden to psychologically manipulate people to make changes in their lives. Small changes. Changes for the better. Large, ambitious changes have come at too high a cost and now the Incrementalists move in small ways.
Right now, Phil needs to find a new recruit. His partner Celeste has died and he needs to take her spike of memory and personality and shove it into someone else's head. He's chosen Ren, a UI design specialist. So they meet up, he makes the pitch, she agrees to join and then things start to get a little weird. Celeste has been plumbing the depths of her powers and she has big plans that go beyond a simple switch of bodies.
It's a fun little book. The chapters are short and clip along, alternating between Phil and Ren. Because Ren is new, there's scope for well-crafted info-dumps that explain the ground rules for being an Incrementalist and these are doled out in small amounts over the course of the book. Additionally, Celeste's efforts mean that even Phil has new stuff to learn so everyone is on a learning curve without huge amounts of exposition.
And threading through everything are the arguments -- when you have the power to change people's minds what do you do? How hard do you push? Where do you push? Can you only bother with little changes and let big stuff go undone? There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in this book and it's fun to tease it all out. Although the meat of the book is watching everyone's understanding of their abilities grow and shift, I'd be interested in sequel showing a larger operation, which you only get hints of in the book.
Anyway, a fun read about a friendly secret society.
later
Tom
