alan laird
Choices make all the difference and some timelines are dark. Really dark.
I was really impressed with this book as it's so early in the author's career. Some great concepts held at just enough distance to stay in the story instead of fussing with the science. Loved the off camera growth of characters.
Space Skimmer is a concise story that could easily be a short story as it establishes the characters so well. It's anchored in lots of golden age tropes and is a nice little adventure. It feels very ‘written for tv' in that characters are very different and much of the story comes from how they interact with each other. It would have been a good pilot.
Morgan nails the action and world creation and leaves me wanting more. I admire authors who come up with a futuristic premise, develop the needed sci-fi building blocks to support it and go full steam. Parts of this story were a little uncomfortable like listening to a friend talk at a party about Libertarianism and realize they are probably less ethical than you thought.
A lovely book about uplift, augmentation, nuances of free will and the villains that always stand ready to steal free will for their profit.
Like other books by this author, there's a trove of interesting topics that are touched or maybe acknowledged but not developed as the mental load is already sufficient to slow the pace and more would pull away from the story velocity.
Lots to think about but the story has great action and characters with heart. Rex really is a good boy.
I'm not a fan of this format. Letters written back and forth implicitly come from two perspectives and create a bit of common ground that is a little bit of a story but more of an experiment.
There are some fantastic time war ideas here and that was enough for me. The ending felt rushed and new ideas spun so quickly they barely seemed to exist before being pushed off stage.
While I dislike the format, I enjoyed reading it but I'm now wondering how much I would recommend the book. This feeling is very odd.
There's a lot to like in this book. I recall reading it years ago but setting it down and feeling mixed. I still have that feeling today but maybe I'm more forgiving because it's hard to find authors that have fun with science, really understand people and can write entertainingly about them.
This book has fun hard science fiction with time travel but it's flipped and the faceless antagonist has the power and the protagonist gets to suffer while their world is brutalized from the future. It's a great story about how the world winds down under this assault and the characters can still hope and live normal lives.
My complaints with the book are mainly that the characters feel a little two dimensional. I never quite feel that the secondary characters have the ability to surprise me and they feel a little like wind-up soldiers moving through the paces to support the story. I don't think this bothers me as much as it used to.
My favorite part of the story is that when I put it down, I immediately related the story's start in Thailand and it's colonial problems to the idea that the world of today could be colonized by this vile force from the future with their advanced toys.
Two great stories in one volume. The first, Haze is interesting and reminds me a bit of Heinlein's heavy social structure wish fulfillment and ipso facto storytelling. Thing move along and offer reasonable pathos to support the social commentary. I enjoyed it but it felt a little one dimensional.
The Hammer of Darkness was a lovely trip back into storytelling like in the parafaith war. Enjoyable but a lot of setup for a super-powered time story that resembled watching someone build a complex Lego project.
Both of these stories are great in some ways and flawed in others.
Interesting world building and perspective from an outsider. So many things about the world described elliptically instead of experienced but perhaps that retains the mystery and feeling of coming from they outside.
Emotionally strong ending with a strange little denouement that might not be enough. I'm sitting here thinking about everything so maybe the lack was more effective.
A bit too long but enjoyable. It reminded me a bit of Cryptonomicon wandering here and there and talking about interesting stuff.
So many characters and their stories and the random text of their days that I'd occasionally wonder if it was important but when it all came together at the end, I felt something about them all.
Immediately after finishing this book I rated it 5 stars but after thinking about it, my rating dropped a star and maybe another.
I loved the pace of the book and the devil may care attitude of the young female protagonist like a modern podkayne, she took no BS and moved forward solving interesting problems.
On reflection, the great innate abilities of the protagonist made each technological solution a little more rube goldbergish and breathless. We see people around the character express love or care for the character but ultimately you have to wonder since the character never displays any attributes or behavior that would create this.
Ultimately it was the end of the story with the “nap” that really felt contrived and mis-paced and lacking in believable character emotion.
I tore through this book and loved it. It feels a bit short and very framed for a screenplay where the protagonist spends a fail amount of time monologuing but not bad.
I was very pleased to see such a great use of the perils of many worlds very efficiently turned into story and action.
At the end of the book, I set it down and thought that it would make a great Outer Limits episode.
Nonlinear storytelling can be really annoying and there were a number of times during this book when I had to turn back to the chapter heading to figure something out. But, by the end of the book, I could see how important it was to my appreciation of the protagonist.
I really enjoyed this book. It was a little too gritty for me sometimes but for a book set in Africa 20+ years in the future, it seems about right.
The alternate history and timeline stories have never appealed very much to me. I find passing interest in the historical navel gazing required to put Roman centurions on Mars. But, I feel that Stross really nails my level of interest on this and is able to move quickly through the how and get to the heart of the novelty inherent in paratime stories.
The young and drifting protagonist coming into her own and growing more skilled is always a favorite vehicle for me. The love interest was good and the action just right.
I'd like to give the book 5 stars but I have a hard time with cliff hangers even when I like the book so much.
Aurora started slow for me and I found both protagonists (human and computer) introductions to give me pause. In both cases the characters grow a lot through the story. I have sympathy for the author trying to portray this but really didn't enjoy the mechanics such as the computer's poor sentence construction to indicate low cognitive ability. It seemed like there might have been a Tropic Thunder moment in editing and a decision should have been made to share that information declaratively instead. It was enough to make me put the book down until I ran out of other things to read a year later.
There was a point when they were exploring another planet where the story started working for me and I tore through it to the end. I put the book down and immediately texted a friend and expressed my sense of WTF on the tacked on ending. A day later, I thought about the ending again and realized that the author had really crossed the bridge and humanized the struggle of the colony ship to the point where I cared about the characters and the denouement could never satisfy but could soothe my need for a different grand ending.
There are a number of things I wish were different about this book but at the end, I was very satisfied.
I read the first book in this trilogy and so many things felt forced. There were great story ideas but I didn't care for the characters or their motivations. Central plot devices like the Trisolarians and their threat felt like puppets on a stage and the pacing felt very wooden.
Flash forward to the third book and the disjointed writing style feels a little more comfortable and I'm more caught up with the action.
I'm still not a fan of any of the characters but at the very end, I'm a fan of the story and some of the ideas are so good.