Simon West-Bulford

intriguing idea where "humans" live to be as much as trillions of years through robust "backup" systems. and then something goes wrong near the end of a universe... reasonably well written, with interesting characters. personally, i'm not a fan of not so much how the book ended, but how quickly it happened...

A gripping yarn of murder and mayhem based on religious zealotry. The plot features a mysterious religious order; a crazed megalomaniac; a quest for lost religious artifacts and, of course, the potential destruction of the world. All great page turning stuff.

I received a copy of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. This was an interesting concept, but I found it unpleasant to read. The overly complicated diction kept me from getting into the story. As Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do."

I had a bit of trouble getting into this book, but found it much more gripping from the second half onward. Predictable in terms of everyone dies and that evil wasn't defeated by the end. Formulaic in terms of setting and characters; it felt like a video game or a movie, with many, many disposable extras, whose deaths are so gratuitous and quick that you just can't care about them. I feel that the world could have been better fleshed out. Overall it was alright.