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The Last Vhalgenn (2008)

by Kayelle Allen

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It's a short book - a novella. But even for that length, it's pretty weak. It ranges from worldbuilding problems (really? in all the generations of this custom, there have never been any rules laid down for what the Vhalgenn does when their royal marries?) to things like - one character throws a fit, for an entire (short) chapter, about how dangerous it is to cross this horrible desert! Next chapter, first paragraph, approximately "When we got out of the desert we were pretty tired and parched". Excuse me? Why bother with throwing a fit over it, if that's all you're going to write? Waste of time. Then there's the fact that the basic story is "She stole my man, I hate her" from two sides - with the man in question carefully and in detail described as extremely handsome, never trained to control his impulses, and a congenital philanderer. Honestly, I'd be happy to give him away. The author says she started this story at 18 - I can believe that, a teenager might think it was a good romance. But now (she says) she's over 60 - and she apparently never revisited the story to flesh it out and make the characters more than sketches. A soldier who can be fooled by lamb's-blood pouches? A soldier, by the way, who gets called out of the front lines and then goes wandering off in another direction, without a thought for the comrades she's abandoning. It's a mildly interesting sketch of a story, that might be written into something good. I wish she had, rather than publishing this. And apparently it was a finalist for an award...doesn't make me impressed with said award or its granters. Not worth reading, for me. Received from the author via AuthorXPro. ( )
  jjmcgaffey | Nov 22, 2016 |
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It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line.

With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?

Infomocracy is Malka Older's debut novel.

PRAISE FOR INFOMOCRACY

“A fast-paced, post-cyberpunk political thriller... If you always wanted to put The West Wing in a particle accelerator with Snow Crash to see what would happen, read this book.” —Max Gladstone, author of Last First Snow

"Smart, ambitious, bursting with provocative extrapolations, Infomocracy is the big-data-big-ideas-techno-analytical-microdemoglobal-post-everything political thriller we've been waiting for." —Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings

"In the mid-21st century, your biggest threat isn’t Artificial Intelligence—it’s other people. Yet the passionate, partisan, political and ultimately fallible men and women fighting for their beliefs are also Infomocracy’s greatest hope. An inspiring book about what we frail humans could still achieve, if we learn to work together." —Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep and the Virga saga

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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