I was intrigued by a Big Idea post on John Scalzi’s weblog and picked up the book. It’s 2110, there’s a new Cold War on between the United States and Eurasia (with South America and Africa as client states providing access to equatorial launch sites), and the elite operatives fall into two categories: mechanics, for their skill with weapons and powered armor, and razors, who handle information warfare. And just as the new skyhook constructed as a symbol of international détente is nearing completion, a terrorist group calling themselves Autumn Rain bring it down and set off conflicts that could start a whole new world war.

The book has lots of cyberpunk action, to the exclusion of getting much of a view of the world itself. (Various appendices wound up on the series’ web site.) The action follows four viewpoint characters through their heavily-constrained views of events; they are, very plausibly, kept in the dark about the large-scale issues by their superiors, and have to speculate amongst themselves to figure it out. The reader eventually gets a good idea about the large-scale conflict in which the main characters are instrumental, but the action never slows down long enough to get a sense of what it’s like to live in the world of 2110. ( )

This book was a nice surprise for me. It read a lot like a higher action version of Richard K Morgan's novel, Altered Carbon, if a bit higher scifi, in my opinion. The imagery in the fights reminded me of the very stylized kung-fu movie-esque action scenes of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, which is to say that they were very visual and mobile, while he keeps the brutality that is a staple of many modern authors (Morgan and Abercrombie, specifically). Honestly the book read as a pretty throwaway and mediocre addition to the genre until the very end, when the author turned the story on its head.

Actually, it's the ending that stopped me from giving it a perfect score. I thought Williams went overboard by yelling "everything you think you know is wrong" with every storyline introduced. I did not feel like I had a chance to figure out the games that were being played. Maybe there were and I missed them. I will keep a closer eye on the sequel. ( )

David J. Williams has written a hyper-kinetic bang-up of a novel with blistering action sequences that hits like a flechette.

Set in the early part of a dystopian 22nd century the geopolitical canvas is sketched out in quick brushstrokes in the preface of the book, and in more detail on the author's website before quickly jumping to the action of zone tripping "razors" and hi-ex tossing combat "mechs". The U.S. is pretty much a military dictatorship at this point; officially, President Harrison gets re-elected every six years, but by 2110, he's already been president for 22 years so, in practice, he's president-for-life (The Throne: Intel slang for the U.S. president).

The narrative is a weave of intertwining stories of three primary and two secondary protagonists. Chapter breaks are forgone and instead character icons differentiate sections of the book.

Claire Haskell, a razor, and Jason Marlowe, a mech drop into a burnt out Amazonian basin city to quell a local uprising. Strom Carson, the mysterious Operative is on his way to the moon to silence an irregularity on his own side. Their handlers convey orders via a drug induced trance. The plots of Lyle Spencer, an info trading European Combine's lackey, and Linehan, man-on-the-run are secondary to these top three but nonetheless compete with them in terms of action. Things heat up when a clandestine terrorist group called Autumn Rain, in a bid to capture power, starts to wind up the gears for a huge global war in spectacular fashion by blowing up the Space Elevator, the joint construction of the superpowers and the living symbol of the détente that they've embarked upon. What follows is a race on earth, space and the moon to stop them but nothing is what it seems and our "heroes" find themselves to be pawns in a much bigger game (there's a big twisty ending). Mirrored Heavens abounds in all the ah-so glee inducing tropes of the genre: huge and sometimes crumbling megalopolises, the ecosystem shot to pieces, plugging into the "zone", power suits with weapon racks, behind the scenes internecine political maneuvering, super sentient A.I.'s, info cartels, slipping into new skins et cetera et cetera.

Williams's prose has a telegraphic style which may turn some people off but is well suited to the furious pace. A minor niggle is that the dense non-stop action leaves little time for in-depth characterization. Cyberpunk fans and fans of Shirow's Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed will gobble this up.

Highly recommended.

http://outofcontrolactionplan.blogspo... ( )

I'm conflicted about this book, as I enjoyed pretty much every page, but was left with an overall lukewarm reaction. I will totally read the sequel, as just a bit more characterization and actual story and this would have made this a significantly better book:

http://mentatjack.com/2008/07/02/revi...

It feels like Williams is writing a tie in book for a video game, and if I'd had 20+ hours of immersion into this world before picking up the book, this probably would have been a 4.5 star review. Having read other reviews, the things that stood out as particularly interesting to me, present tense, staccato prose, POV icons, etc were more of a distraction to everyone else. Possibly they were to me as well, and I just missed the plot.

I'd reiterate the recommendation on my blog, if you're going to read this, absorb all the detailed world information available on http://autumnrain2110.com/ before reading the book. ( )