http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2009/02... ( )

(Alistair) This is the book that beat out Fairyland for the top spot on my oddness pile; principally because while odd - and it is, indeed, very odd - it's to me a much shiner and more pleasing kind of odd.

So, let's see if I can begin to explain the universe. Many years after a singularity event (the "Hard Rapture") which ate most of humanity, the known universe is divided between three major power blocs: America Offline, as their name indicates the rejectionist "farmer" faction who escaped the singularity event; the Knights of Enlightenment, leftover-posthuman-tech-poking descendants of Eastern cultures; and space-settling ex-Third-World communists. Meanwhile, it's stitched together by the Carlyles, the family business which owns and controls the wormhole skein (another posthuman leftover) that connects everywhere - the family in question being descended from Glasgow gangsters.

(Who, yes, are written as speaking in dialect, but don't worry, it's not nearly as thick as actual Glasgow dialect to read, so y'all'll be able to read it.)

And then one day a Carlyle exploratory mission heads through a wormhole gate, and discovers a world populated by people who fled the Hard Rapture by starship, and wacky hijinks ensue...

And things get very weird very fast (leaving aside, of course, those things which started out very weird). Alliances shift faster than a rat in an aqueduct, and the plot barrels along on a veritable rollercoaster. The only trouble is... when you come to the end of the line, it seems a little thin.

Compelling, it is, and very readable. It certainly kept me reading on the plane. But, although the course of the book raises a lot of interesting questions, it unfortunately doesn't do a great deal to answer them. Basically: lots of good stuff, fascinating world - good satire, let us by no means forget the satire, nicely integrated in places - but kind of a mish-mash, a bit disjointed, and while there is an ending, there's really not enough closure to fully carry it.

Overall, I liked it, but it didn't really shine for me. Not sure whether I'd recommend it or not, in the general case.

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ce... ) ( )

Newton's Wake is a space opera (it says so on the cover). The Carlyles, a band of entrepreneurs (or gangsters) who control a profitable wormhole network discover a planet with some rather interesting artifacts. Too bad it's already inhabited by a lost fragment of humankind. A simple combat archeology operation turns into a huge mess that threatens the whole Carlyle family business.

It gets rather complicated in the end, and it's kind of funny how this book really has no bad guys or good guys - or at least I'm finding it hard to decide who are who. There's quite a bit of action, some pretty cool futuristic technology, plenty of rather entertaining comedy (though that seems to divide opinions pretty wildly according to the Amazon reviews) and even though the purpose of it all is kind of hard to follow at times, I still found the book a good read.

Granted, at some point I thought Newton's Wake was really, really good, but in the end it's not - it's just good. The ending, in particular, didn't please me quite as thoroughly as I would've wanted. Someone said the end of the book felt vague, and I think that's pretty close to how I felt. It was worth reading, however, as Newton's Wake certainly has some pretty wild highlights. I was particularly fond of the search engines.

(Original review at my review blog) ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/141439.htm...

Enjoyed it, but not quite as much as I had hoped; the Balkan heat may have interfered with my concentration. ( )

Humanity made artificial intelligence, and it decided it didn't want to hang around, going through its own Singularities.

As a result, lots of reall cool and weird tech is left behind, including FTL travel, and a bunch of wormhole type gates for travelling around to different places.

Humanity, after a war as a result of all this has split into various different factions. One of these controls the gates, economically, and one of their missions stumbles across a human remnant that has been cut off for some time.

This sparks off another conflict.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/07/newtons-wake-ken-macleod.html ( )