Worldwired

I spent the first third or so of this concluding book of the Jenny Casey trilogy missing the things that I had really enjoyed most about Hammered (fast paced action and intriguing characters like Mitch and Razorface). But things certainly picked up when Jenny and crew go EVA to explore the “birdcage” alien ship, and the pace never really slows down again after that. Some of the political machinations required a whole lot of suspension of disbelief, but the book succeeds in providing an entertaining story that builds suspense and leads to a satisfying climax with a real sense of closure.

I enjoyed Bear’s aliens (particularly the profoundly different-from-humanity birdcage aliens). At a fundamental level this book is about show more establishing communication, and the challenges of communicating with the aliens prove appropriately daunting (as opposed to the “we blink our lights three times, they blink their lights three times, and in no time we’re talking” approach). Leslie’s experiences with the birdcage aliens brought to mind the beautiful conclusion of James Tiptree’s Up the Walls of the World, one of my favorites.

I never connected with Charlie or Leslie or Riel in the way that I had with some of the characters in the first book, and Gabe and Elspeth are reduced to bit players. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the characters’ responses to the traumatic events of Scardown, but then it’s hard to know how people would respond to such events. Still, I recommend the series and look forward to more from Bear. show less

This is the third book in the Jenny Casey series and what a thrilling ending. This series could qualify as a spy thriller as well as Sci/Fi because it ended with thrills and solved mysteries aplenty. It was also a very prescient book. It was published in 2005 and it was filled with references to nanotechnology, quantum computing, and space elevators, as well as First Contact with alien species. What was also neat about this book and this series, was that I am reading another science book, this one by Ira Flatow, host of NPR's science talk show Science Friday, and in that book I read an essay on space elevators and nanotechnology as well as quantum computing. Low and behold I am reading about the same things in a fictional future world. show more I also still love the idea of a "woman of a certain age" as heroine, and Jenny did nothing to disappoint me in this final installment. While there are some fantastical elements in this novel and some plot threads that end, or go nowhere, overall it was a good series to read. The author left plenty of room for expansion on the story and I hope that someday she will write about Jenny and her "family" of misfits and malcontents again. I will definitely be reading more of Bears work in the future. show less

(Amy) I'm not as dubious about the crapsack-world trope as my husband is, but it does knock a few points off a book's total score if it feels gratuitous. Or it would if I did anything so organized as keeping an actual score for books, but that would be way more anal than I have time or inclination to manage, so we'll just leave the points-thing as a figure of speech. Ahem. Sorry. In any case, the crapsackyness of this world doesn't feel gratuitous. The environmental disarray provides a goal and a motivation - something to overcome and/or fix; the political yuck provides a source of antagonism.

So, not gratuitous . . . just a trifle simplistic, I think. But that's OK, because until I settled down to analyze it in those terms, it didn't show more register as such, which means all the literary devices performed as they were supposed to in making me care about and become invested in the story. Which I was, in case y'all want it spelled out. Most of the things I particularly like about the second book, detailed in the entry linked above, are still true here. Not to mention, a few lingering reservations I had about a handful of plot or setting elements were resolved to my satisfaction, making me retroactively like the first two books more, too.

In short: A well-crafted series, and one I heartily recommend. It's a little difficult to believe this was Bear's first published work - the rough edges are few and unobtrusive.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2009/08/worldwired_elizabeth_be... ) show less

This one deserves a re-read with the other two, it's been a while since I read the first two in the series. There are repercussions from the previous books that mean that it all comes together at the end. There are two alien ships in space near earth and people from earth go to see what's going on and it will change everything.
There's politics and space shennigans and a lot of different characters doing different things. It's a good read with strong characters and I really want to find the other two and go back to the start again.

Jun11:

Characters: The cast doesn't change much for the last book. A few new scientists add a little something, but the old carryovers are great.

Plot: A little better than the middle book. Some fun first-contact work and exploration. Some action.

Style: Gets it done. Engaging to read.

Adventure story set in the 2060s, projecting crises of our own time into the not-too-distant future.

Well, that ended fairly dramatically. Excellently done.