Let’s get the disclaimer out the way - Yaron (the author) contacted me on Goodreads to ask if I’d like to read and rStatisticity - what a great name!
Let’s get the disclaimer out the way - Yaron (the author) contacted me on Goodreads to ask if I’d like to read and review his new indie sci-fi. I get quite a few requests like that, and I only take-up one or two offers a year - but this book definitely sounded interesting.
I find mixed reviews the hardest to write - if it’s all good, or all bad, it’s easy to say why. Statisticity is a mixed bag - some great ideas, a well developed world, distinct characters and a really high standard of writing throughout - yet the sum of the parts did not entirely wow me. I’ll try and explain why... (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)
I confess that that I am a harsh critic - I mostly read award winning sci-fi and fantasy, ‘the best spec fic has to offer’ - and I can’t help but compare... •any VR/hacker story is getting judged against Gibson and Stephenson •any post-apocalpytic story set in Asia, is getting judged against Bacigalupi •if it’s a psychic detective story, I’m going to hold it up against Hamilton •etc, etc, etc
Statisticity is a good book - but judged against the best it falls short.
Let’s start with the premise: Somewhere in the past (our future) the shit hit the fan. Modern consumer life is not maintainable in a climate-change crippled world, and the populace need a new vision. China steps in with a new VR world, Zhongguo. It’s so good that people flood to it - there they can live the good life, a cross between social media and gaming, only emerging to eat and exercise before plugging back in. A sort of voluntary ‘Matrix’. Their every action in Zhongguo is automatically tracked, analysed and fed into the ‘Stability Algorithm’, which uses Zhongguo data to accurately model human behaviour, to allow the government to better control the populace offline. The real world has become a grey and shabby place, with most folk plugged in - and Zhongguo kept getting better, upgrading to Z.v2, with Z.v3 on the horizon. That’s where our story starts.
There are aspects of the premise that I love - the moral ambiguity of the Zhongguo scheme (is it an evil empire controlling the people, or is it safety net for a population which has proven it cannot manage itself properly?) - the stated goal of ‘achieving stability’ - (does stable equal stagnant or safe?). Setting it in China is a great idea - the Chinese are frequently ‘the other guys’ in Sci-Fi, with authors recognising that they would be a huge power, but failing to make it the focal point - so that’s refreshing. I love VR stories - two worlds running in parallel - it’s one of the most successful fantasy structures (eg, Neverwhere - there’s another world right next to ours that we just don’t see/recognise, or Thomas Covenant - there’s another world that sucks you in when it needs you) and VR brings elements of that world-with-a-world into sci-fi.
But I don’t think the premise fulfills its potential. The core element of the premise is the Zhongguo universe, but the story is set 99% offline - the setting is an ‘empty’ Shanghai - the world of the people who didn’t join Zhongguo. The premise offers this rich contrast between vibrant-online and a desaturated-offline, but with the online unexplored all we’re left with is the grey-scape. There are logistical issues with a world where 99% of the populace plugged-in that just aren’t addressed, and tend to undermine the believability. Who grows the crops and runs the factories? Who keeps the power on, and the water running? How does a world economy continue to function? These questions are glossed over. Then there’s the VR access technology: I’ve read quite a few VR books, and there are many options for tech - from modern era goggles, near-future skin-stim-suits, textured gel tanks, far future neural jacks, nanotech, etc. We’re given glimpses of the tech - some kind of halo-headset, some kind of initiation process/surgery? In many ways Glazer is from the ‘Le Guin’ school of sci-fi, more interested in the people and society than the technology - but for me, that’s still got to be bullet-proof. My final issue - no technology stands in isolation. This is an exploration of the impact of advanced VR on humanity - but where is the artificial intelligence, robotics and cybernetics, genetic manipulation, advanced materials and engineering, etc? No technology evolves in isolation, but it feels like everything except VR has stayed still (or stepped backwards). The best sci-fi often focuses on one ‘core’ tech-type to explore, but still includes nods to hundreds of others to present a cohesive, integrated future. And for a world specifically crippled by global warming, there seems to be very little awareness of environmental factors noted in the culture - you’d think that would have made an impact (beyond the traumatic ‘chaos’ of the period).
There’s 2 key characters: •Logan: A businessman-hacker, running a dubious ‘goldfarm’ business from a bunker. He’s an ex-prodigy just trying to get by. •Detective Wu: A man who cannot enter Zhonggou due to a fundamental mental incompatibility. He also sufffers from headaches and seizures brought on by proximity to high/Zhonggou-type technology.
Logan is trying to trace his missing buddy, Raz, who has been arrested and ‘relocated’ by the government. Detective Wu is given a promotion and set on a special mission that his condition makes him suitable for. Then lots of Zhonggou infrastructure buildings get blown up. One of these turns out to be a secret research lab, and some ‘special’ kids have escaped - finding them is Wu’s new case. One of these turns up in Logan’s bunker. Ling-Ling’s father is being made the scapegoat for the attacks. Logan and Ling-Ling think they can predict more attacks based on data he provided before he vanished. They have to flee the bunker, and join the metro workers, who are embroiled in a civil/turf-war - and they realise that the weird kid they picked up has special powers. Logan logs into Zhongguo and meets a ghost-type-recording of his missing buddy, Raz.They come up with a plan to try and sabotage the launch of Z.v3. They enact the plan - some weird stuff happens turning the people within Zhonggou into a botnet. Wu realises the experiment kids have the same condition as him and shares visions with one. Metro wars start. The end.
Side note: Raz’s full name is Erasmas. My cat is called Raz/Erasmas. I named my cat after a Neal Stephenson character and I’m pretty sure the author is also a Stephenson fan. There seems to be a good chance his Raz and my Raz are both named after the same Anathem-monk. This makes me happy.
Issues with these characters: Wu’s motivation is too muddled throughout. He’s all confused with headaches, and confused to be jolted out of his routine, and he’s cautious and nervous… He’s conflicted between loyalty to the state and empathy with the kids he’s hunting for. He has no clear goal - he’s just following the path of his investigation, without a strong purpose - he’s not trying to catch an evil murderer, he’s not trying to save a child in danger - he’s just drifting along the breadcrumb trail of clues to see where they go… Logan has a clear goal he’s pursuing, but his character is very flat. There was nothing about him that resonated with the Chinese setting. He’s smart and determined and competent - but there’s nothing specifically likeable about him, to make him really own his moments in the spotlight.
Some of the supporting POV cast - Ling-ling, Sister Song, Metro Dude (I forget his name) have a bit more spark about them, but they don’t have enough air-time to compensate.
I also took issue with the ending - it builds up some good momentum, but then just fizzles away. Not enough is explained or resolved. The ending packs no particular thematic punch; the story just stops.
The biggest plus point is the quality of the scene-by-scene writing. Dialogue, descriptions, pacing, tone and style - all spot on. It reads very smoothly, the pages flicker by, and it’s probably the best standard of scene writing I’ve encountered in indie sci-fi - and that’s what makes me enthusiastic about the future for this author. All the issues I’ve mentioned above can be improved with a good editor to kick the tyres at the cast design and plotting stage - but an editor can’t make the actual words flow, and fortunately Glazer already knows how to do that!
I’ve deliberately left-off mentioning the e-book format until last. It’s an online book - not an e-book like a kindle format. This basically means words can be tagged like web links - clicking place names will show you where they are on a map - unusual words will link to definitions as per the a story-world equivalent of wikipedia (with some reddit like comments). Character names can link to profiles, etc. Some of it is quite handy. Some of it is the equivalent to traditional footnotes - expanding on prose points - but the format allows the main text to shuffle apart to allow the footnote next to pop in at that point - which is great. Mostly it adds to the experiences, and shows the extra care and love that’s gone into the story’s creation.
There are two usages that I didn’t (personally) like. 1.Pictures. Most books don’t include imagery - and it’s a gamble when they do. The ebook format makes it easier to embed imagery - and it’s great for factual things like maps, graphs, etc - but the illustrated scenes jarred with my imaginings. 2.Short stories. There are short stories embedded within some of these link words - some of them are good, giving extra details/depth about what happened between one ‘core scene’ and the next - but I found the placement of them as link words mid sentence/paragraph jarring - because you can’t read something of that length and then just carry on at the same length - and you don’t know the length of the footnote/short story before you click the link. I’d advise keeping the link words for the factual/definition stuff - and add the short stories in as ‘bonus chapters’ with clear links at the chapter break points. That way they can complement the story structure, and better manage the audience expectations.
Overall, very interesting - some very strong points, comfortably clears the 3-star threshold, but too many issues for me to give it any more than that....more
We have a friend, Meg. Our toddler, Fin, is a big fan of the Meg & Mog picture books. Whenever Meg came to visit, Fin would ask where Mog was.
Meg is nowWe have a friend, Meg. Our toddler, Fin, is a big fan of the Meg & Mog picture books. Whenever Meg came to visit, Fin would ask where Mog was.
Meg is now lodging with us for a year. She has a new boyfriend. I told Fin that her new boyfriend was called Mog, and because Meg was a witch she had turned her cat into a man. Fin accepted this and calls him Mog.
Mog is a good-natured soul and accepted that in this house, he will be known as Mog.
Mog is also a sci-fi fan, and was distressed to learn than I hadn't read much Iain M. Banks - so he's given me The Algebraist, which sounds like my favourite kind of book (big, space-opera adventure!).
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Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
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Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my GIFTS AND GUILTY list.
Regardless of how many books are already queued patiently on my reading list, unexpected gifts and guilt-trips will always see unplanned additions muscling their way in at the front.
I'm a big fan of Peter Hamilton's work, yet I'd never heard of Lightstorm until a couple of months ago, when I was compiling my Pantheon list.
This is a YA sci-fi, set in a shared world called 'The Web - 2027'. Half a dozen different authors each contributed a story, all with different casts, but a shared setting and antagonist. Hamilton did not create this world and is working within the framework of the shared project.
Initially, the most striking aspect of this story is the use of jargon - there's a lot and it's quite silly. A kids bedroom is his cocoon. Boring people (or things) are cogs. People you don't like should curl-up. Computer power is measured in mips. An online AI character has a phace. Leaving the web is scuttling. Eight is good, six is bad, widow is amazing. People spin in and out of websites. There's so much webspeak, the book has a glossary. It comes across as very 'teeny' but unconvincing.
Next up - the web itself. This concept of the web is built around VR. Everyone has VR interfaces to access the web, either through basic gloves and glasses, or more commonly suits - technology is just reaching to a direct link to the nervous system (a neural shunt/jack/chip, etc). There's no mention of basic 2D screen interfacing - which again, is unconvincing. So websites are places. Hacking is like pulling a heist, with security and viruses, etc, taking physical form (as spiders, rats, cages, etc). This is all very reminiscent of Tad Williams' Otherland series (an epic fantasy story disguised as a sci-fi set in a VR universe). If you liked Otherland, you'll like The Web 2027 as a kids version. Also worth mentioning that some self-aware AIs have been granted citizenship status and just live in the web as regular folk. To me, as a sci-fi geek, this is a pretty huge deal - friendly, independent AI being something of a techie nirvana - but it's just dropped in here as an aside (and link events from another book in the series).
Then we have the realworld situation: This is the UK after global warming has hit and oil/petrol has run out. People don't travel much, the roads are decaying, we all live in our local communities and use the web for anything more distant. Green energy is important. As is an eco-friendly mindset.
The story itself is a fairly simple one - a kid sees something strange. Him and his net buddies do a bit of web hacking to figure out what's going on, and then the kid goes on a realword mission to get the proof - nicely mixing the action between web and realworld. The kid is likeable, the mission is worthwhile, and the pacing/action skips along quickly. It's a light, breezy, easy-read story (as long as the jargon doesn't grate).
I have issues with the conclusion - it's very much a bad-guy out of nowhere - because that part of the story is tied into the larger series, which I haven't read - so that element doesn't work particularly well as a stand-alone.
This isn't brilliant, but it's alright - it's about a 2.6 rounded up to a 3 star rating, because I'm a Hamilton fan.
Also worth noting that Lightstorm was an Xmas present from my wife's parents - and as it's a fairly random and specific book which I particularly wanted and they bothered to track it down, I thought that was very cool.
Despite reading Pratchett since I was twelve, I've never picked up Strata. Why?
It's just not particularly good.
That's a hard thing for a massive PratcDespite reading Pratchett since I was twelve, I've never picked up Strata. Why?
It's just not particularly good.
That's a hard thing for a massive Pratchett fan to say, but my favourite thing about this book is that I've finished it.
It's episodic to a fairly ridiculous degree. So this happened. Then this happened. Then they kept walking and this happened. Then they flew for a while and this happened. None of the happening are in any way influenced by the previous happenings. It's just a long chain of stuff that happened after each other. Each happening has a clever idea, but they all stand in isolation, there's no cohesive plot. And then the end happened.
Yes, it's always fun to see the early scribblings of a genius - but to me, this is more like the early stumblings of a brilliant distance runner. He soon got into his stride and pulled away from the pack... but at this stage he's all gangly knees and elbows flying sideways...
I can't recall another book I've given just 2-stars to, but still felt so enthusiastic about..!
Disclaimer:(view spoiler)[ I was gifted a free copy of I can't recall another book I've given just 2-stars to, but still felt so enthusiastic about..!
Disclaimer:(view spoiler)[ I was gifted a free copy of A Stranger North in return for an honest review. (hide spoiler)] About the Author:(view spoiler)[ 99% of self-published authors looking to promote their work on Goodreads should get in touch with Henry J. Olsen for some tips. This is my third year as a Goodreads reviewer, but only the second time I've taken up an offer to review a self-published book. Friendly, low pressure, kept in touch despite me taking over a year to get around to his book; seems like a genuinely nice guy. (hide spoiler)]
So what's the book about?(view spoiler)[ 1. This is a novella, so it's pretty much straight to the point, and all-over in a few bitesize chunks. 2. It's a post-apocalyptic, western-tinged adventure - Brin's The Postman is an easy reference point. 3. It's about a wandering hero, being stalked by 'government' forces, arriving in an isolated town. The innocent smallfolk of the town are put in danger, as bait to lure him to an outpost where the badguys can deliver a message - inviting him to come meet them. ... and that's about it. (hide spoiler)]
Come on then, why only 2 stars? *sigh* This is hard. I'm a little brain-dead tonight. Ok, I'll try. (view spoiler)[ Imagine you're watching an amateur football match, and you're totally wrapped up the game. You judge the players in relation to each other, to who else is on the field. The defence is a bit creaky. That forward's got electric pace, etc. You don't judge them in relation to the pros, because they're not playing in the same game. Books don't work like that. Every author is playing in the same game. So when Henry J Olsen steps up to do his thing, I'm comparing him to his peers at the very top end of the spectrum. David Brin won a Locus Sci-Fi award for The Postman, but I only gave that 3 stars because wandering hero adventures aren't my favourite flavour - too episodic, too prone to archetypal/clichéd encounters. Sure, they can be done well - Stephen King set the bar with the Gunslinger saga, but he created a whole post-apocalyptic fantasy multiverse for his flawed hero to wander through. However nice a guy Henry is, he's not yet competing with the big boys. (hide spoiler)]
Give me some specifics:(view spoiler)[ 1 - The prose is solid, but some of the words are a little repetitious and jar. There are 11 smirks in just 95 pages of story. There are 9 crept/creeping/creeps. These ratios aren't 'bad-writing', but they're the kind of thing a good editor would've caught.
2 - For a short novella the focus is awful dilute - however brief some are, I think we hit six or seven different character POVs in that 95 pages (John, Emiko, Nathan.. Ramses, The General... Aristotle at the end... and the barman at the beginning?) If I were editing, I'd push back on that. We need the audience to buy into the main thread, and that's John (the wandering hero) or Nathan (the homestead big-brother who needs the heroes help to save his sister). Pick one of those and give them 90% of the air-time. Sell them. Win us over. Sure, the whole cast is kinda interesting, and it's great that you want to tell all those stories, but if you've only got 95 pages to spend you've got to put all your eggs in one basket.
3 - Hero overpowered vs Antagonist underpowered. The evil sidekicks were comic relief - it's even flagged by the 'victim' that they're pathetic. The fact that the our hero gets some karmic assistance (angry mama bear!) in dispatching them just left me feeling sorry for them. And the head badguy on the scene is just clueless, uninformed, and totally out-gunned. This is never a challenge for the big man, John.
4 - Unrealistic. The safe return of the girl, Emiko is not relevant to the evil scheme. If this were a grittier scenario, well... have you ever seen the movie written by the musician Nick Cave called The Proposition? It's a wild west style movie, set in the 1880s. That film is brutal... but feels way more 'real' than A Stranger North. Emiko would've been gang raped as soon as those three rednecks grabbed her.
5 - Plot hole. If the end goal is to deliver a message, why not just walk up to him and deliver the message. Or send the girl back with the message. Why kidnap the girl, invite John to come out and rescue her, get your idiot sidekicks killed - and then deliver the message? Makes no sense. (hide spoiler)]
So... why do you stay you're still positive?(view spoiler)[ Because there's potential here. None of the specific issues listed above would have made it past a forceful editor. The ebb and flow of the story, the little details and nuances are all solid. The vision, the tone, the atmosphere, world building and scope of the land are all rich, strong and cohesive. By and large the prose flickers past unnoticed, and the story breathes - it's got life. (hide spoiler)]
There's a lot here to like, and there's a lot here to make a reader give The Northland Chronicles another chance to impress. I know the second book is already out...
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Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my GIFTS AND GUILTY list.
Regardless of how many books are already queued patiently on my reading list, unexpected gifts and guilt-trips will always see unplanned additions muscling their way in at the front.
I’ve never hit the Goodreads character limit for a review before now. *deep breath* Let’s begin.
Ripples in an Emerald Sea, is a unique, fascinating and deeply frustrating book. I had never read a self-published book before this one. I know it’s considered the ‘next big thing’ – but I’ve been living in the past, catching up on the best sci-fi and fantasy books of the last thirty years – I’ve not paid much attention to the way traditional publishing models are changing. If it weren’t for Goodreads, Kindles and Smashwords I wouldn’t have had this opportunity - and however many issues I go on to highlight with Ripples, I am genuinely very pleased to have read this book.
Before I settled down and became a devoted family man with a steady job in finance, I used to be an academic-hippy-artsy type with a degree in scriptwriting and did time as a film script editor in the big city. Once you put your editing hat on during a read, I swear, it’s impossible to take it back off.
I can see why Ripples would be rejected by a publishing company. It’s prickly. It’s odd. It doesn’t fit any marketing niche. But it’s also got a strong, original voice and some enthralling, multilayered world building. There’s a great deal of potential here.
Let’s start with the premise: Lya is a ‘provost’ (think Military Police Detective). She’s a newly graduated, top of her class, perfectionist. Lya is on her first assignment and she’s been sent to the planet Illendum to investigate a suicide, possibly linked to thefts from army stores. ‘The Alliance Military’ Lya works for is the most powerful force in the galaxy. They have neural-nets to connect their minds directly to their equipment (and each other) and run real-time combat analyses. They have femtobots (nanotech) which repair damage to their body insanely fast, making them very difficult to kill (and grant eternal youth). They have training programs which instil them with a thousand years of pseudo-experience in warfare. The ‘A-M’ are hardcore, and Lya is one of their best and brightest. But Lya has a secret – she’s found a way to duplicate her personality into her neural-net – she’s got a mind-twin called Aerie who operates autonomously. Aerie handles all of Lya’s interactions with the net, interfacing with the army base artificial intelligences (called Genies), hacking into files, etc, leaving Lya free to focus on ‘piloting’ their body. The situation on Illendum is unlike anything Lya was expecting. The A-M were meant to be there on a peacekeeping mission – but the base is an abysmal state, discipline has gone to hell, corruption seems to be the norm, drugs and violence are commonplace and the war they’re meant to be preventing has turned into all-out genocide, to which the A-M bigwigs are turning a blind eye. This is far from the shiny model of efficiency she had been lead to expect at the academy! Lya basically wants to arrest everyone, immediately, and the plot goes in several directions as she gets drawn towards whichever poor rule breaker has caught her eye most recently. She never sleeps; never stops. Lya’s on a one-woman mission to get to the bottom of this shitstorm – while remaining the model obedient soldier to her lacklustre superiors.
Normally in an editorial report I’d follow premise with plot, then a character summary – but in Ripples, the tone and atmosphere are more prominent.
Ripples is science fiction which puts a love of science front and centre. We’re talking about science in its classic triumvirate of physics, chemistry and biology. In our modern age of the internet, we have all the data of the world at our fingertips. In Lya’s futuristic age of neural-nets, she has the data of the world at her neurone-tips. She is an expert on any subject which is relevant to her investigation. She thinks like a textbook. When Lya gets in a fist fight, she doesn’t just hit you as hard as she can – she calculates the perfect pivot point about which to rotate to generate maximum impact, and will follow through on that equation with mass estimations to give you the force transmitted in Newtons. When Lya gets in a knife fight, she doesn’t just poke with the sharp bit – she analyses the anatomical weaknesses of her opponent and picks precisely which bones she’s going to plunge her blade between (with their full scientific names). When Lya plays with explosives – well, you get the point – but there were a couple of chemical names listed which took-up more than an entire row on my kindle! It’s an incredibly jarring style to begin with because it’s so precise, angular and unrelenting. It’s hard work, and it’s draining – this is not easy reading that you can skim through with only half your brain turned on. But I came to appreciate it – it fits.
Mannan is gunning for a very tense and oppressive atmosphere – and absolutely nails it. Illendum is a high-g planet – everything is too heavy for Lya to begin with, the whole planet is crushing her spirits. Illendum is a swamp-world, bleak and rotting – much as her ‘pure’ military dream is disintegrating. With so much corruption, who can Lya trust? Cue creepy paranoia inducing music. The spiky, overly exacting terminology twines through this heavy atmosphere like a tangle of needle-sharp brambles.
Where Mr. Mannan has made his own life difficult, in my humble opinion, is with his character designs. Lya herself is great in principle – the idealistic young hotshot detective/soldier is a solid archetype to build from. But how do you demonstrate personality best? Interactions with other characters. What type of supporting character brings out the full range of personality traits? Friends. Problems here? Lya has none. She had friends in her backstory – back at the academy – and she misses them. But here, in this book, Lya is a lone-wolf. The only person she has to talk to is Aerie, and since Aerie is a mind-twin, Lya is basically talking to herself a lot. Not ideal. So how about making friends? Lya tries. A bit. She’s not very good at it. I hate to say it, but some of the dialogue is horrific. Lya is trying for a kind of jarhead military banter with her new acquaintances, but these are super-soldiers with instantaneous access to mad-scientist insights – it just does not fit. Square peg, round hole – you can’t just close your eyes and ram it in there. With no buddies to bounce off, Lya becomes far more one dimensional than she could have been – she lives for the mission; the plot and the character become one and the same, only plot action illuminates personality.
Except for the tangents. Oh yes. The tangents. So Lya is bi-sexual, which is cool for a military story. Apparently the A-M is big on casual sex, but not so cool about serious relationships (because they impair impartial military decision making). So there’s a scene where Lya’s in the gym, checking out this hottie, and they’re like – I’m horny, let’s have girl-on-girl sex – boom, let’s get it on! And we pretty much never see this girl again. Sorry Adam, that’s called a gratuitous sex scene. Then there’s this other time, when a tangent literally runs into Lya in a corridor and she has to go and play a game of ptolm ball. The game is plenty cool, a kind of twisted-gravity American Football with panels on the floor/walls which unleash crazy effects. Or something. I liked it. But I also liked Ender’s battle games. And Quidditch. I like cool imaginative games. Doesn’t mean they can just be thrown into the middle of a story with no real plot integration like this. It’s clunky and dilutes the momentum.
So, going back to character. Did I mention that Lya only has one arm? I didn’t? Damn. That must be because it’s basically irrelevant, except as a constant irritant to Lya. These stupid bases are designed for soliders with two hands! Did nobody ever consider the mono-armed among us? No. Because of those crazy nano-tech super-bots which repair everyone’s bodies. Except Lya’s arm. They don’t work on that (because of X convoluted reason). But the only having one arm thing does make her combat achievements against dual armed opponents massively more impressive. Reloading guns is a bitch though. Win some, lose some.
In terms of character arc, we’re looking at a drift from protocol driven behaviour towards a more independent mindset. We’re looking at an idealist losing their naivety. We’re looking at an introvert accepting their dependence on others. So it’s something of a broader horizons coming-of-age story. I can only push that angle so far though. Two of my tutors used to argue over what drove strong character motivation. The old man used to say it came from the fulcrum where head, heart and soul vied for supremacy. The young man used to say much the same, but with head, heart and horniness all pulling in different directions. Lya is 90% head, 8% horniness, and 2% split between heart and soul. Ok – that’s probably a little harsh, but her character is so top-heavy (excuse the pun) with intellect, the girl’s a genius who triple-thinks most decisions. There’s some heart and soul in her love for the A-M ideal, but that’s such a clinical zeal it’s too slick to get a handle on. There’s some heart and soul when she misses her academy crew – but they’re backstory we never meet, and even though dramatic events are hinted at, we never learn enough to understand how it’s shaped our lass – so that avenue is underexploited too. The horniness is easy to relate too, but even that is done with such calculation that it keeps emotion at arm’s length. Lya is too disciplined to feel easily – she’s a military machine – in many ways she’s barely human, and that undermines audience ability to empathise with the character. She becomes a brilliant and fascinating specimen – but there’s always the glass wall between you.
Circling back around to plotting – probably my biggest pet peeve. There’s no doubt that the author is a smart cookie, and the chains of causality are taught and tangled, just as they should be in a mystery. But the planning behind the plotting structure is baffling. Our original case is the suicide and thefts from stores, but we don’t even find that out until after a shuttle crash, a hovercraft attack, and a psychoactive medical assault – so we’re three major beats in before we hit our inciting incident. Then we’re off sideways riding tangent after tangent. You can count that stages of our ‘core’ investigation on one hand and the overarching plot thread of ‘the big conspiracy’ soon becomes our anchor. Once that’s settled things unify quickly and the story builds up some good, strong momentum with several chapters of consistently excellent action sequences. Then comes the ending. Oh, the ending! Why, Adam, why? Everything’s shaping up for this big showdown between Lya and the evil Sylarb King. And it never comes. Nothing is resolved. There’s no climax. There’s just this... twist (if you’re generous enough to call it that), which is poorly foreshadowed, not at all explained and left me genuinely angry. It has nothing to do with the plot or character arc to that point. You may as well write “and then an interdimensional rift opened, a small purple seagull flew through it singing the A-Team theme tune and threw fairy dust on Lya”. It does not make the story better.
Adam has chosen to break away from Lya occasionally to illuminate events outside her sphere. I applaud this choice – we need some diversity. Sadly, these interludes are irregular and erratic. There’s an A-M agent up on the orbital station that gets a scene at the beginning, and then suddenly comes back into prominence with a whole string of scenes towards the end (when you’re suddenly like, wha? who is this guy?) And there’s a couple of cut-aways to the evil Sylarb King, which (apart from an extra gratuitous bisexual group sex scene) add little except to confirm that yes, he definitely is behind le grande conspiracy.
Structure is all tied in with the plotting problems. I’m not going to touch that with a bargepole today.
Pacing is actually pretty strong throughout. The action rolls thick and fast but Lya’s speed of thought keeps it intelligible. There are moments of transition that could have been improved, such as right at the beginning when the shuttle landing begins to go wrong. Lya’s just chilling out, chatting with another new A-M arrival on the planet, and then suddenly we’re in an action scene and Lya’s doing her special-ops thing to hijack the shuttle computers and save the day. There’s no uh-oh moment where we all take a deep breath because we know the faeces and fan are about to make contact. Instead it just sideswipes you, like a car crash. Dramatic, yes, entertaining – so-so.
In terms of package (cover, title, blurb, etc) – I’m at a loss – sorry Mannan. I don’t get the title. The sea has very little to do with this story. The image of a ripple in an emerald sea doesn’t resonate with the story. Honestly, I’ve got nothing. The cover image is relevant, but the overall design and colours are uninspiring/dull. The blurb is functional, but not evocative “a dream of utopia imperiled” doesn’t fly, because ain't nobody ever been dreaming of Illendum as a utopia.
Final subheading would be peers and market position – which is actually a fascinating question here. As one of my mind-book updates I tried to namecheck which books it was reminding me of. I’m going to reel these off in reverse order: Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials trilogy –A daemon is basically a soul made flesh. Great idea! This came to mind when thinking about Mannan’s gambit with Aerie, Lya’s mind-twin. Mervyn Peak – Gormanghast – there’s probably a better comparison, but this is what came to mind when thinking about the oppressive atmosphere of Ripples. Peter Hamilton – Confed/Void series – the character Paula Myo is a super smart sci-fi police agent – definitely a good touchpoint to compare with Lya. Alastair Reynolds – The Prefect – space detective again. Richard Morgan – Altered Carbon (& series) – high action, ex-military body-swapping space detective. Stephen Baxter – Exultant – far future space war, details and oppressive atmosphere. Adam Roberts – Stone – far future, escaped prisoner on a mission. Greg Egan – Diaspora – Science heavy, far future AI missions. CJ Cherryh – Cyteen – Young female genius, in complex political situation.
In summary: if I have so many complaints about this book, how the hell did it get three stars? Because I was gripped. Because it made me think. Because it’s original, and I loved that. Because it’s not a million miles away from being a great book. This doesn’t feel like a final draft to me, it feels too cohesive for a first draft – but maybe a second or third? I don’t know how many drafts a novel normally goes through – a film script will normally hit double figures before production starts, with numerous small revisions on the fly. But this feels like it could have gone through the mill at least a couple more times to grind off the roughest corners and accentuate the strongest elements. Because I feel this is a writer with a lot of potential and it’s exciting to get involved early in his journey. I’m looking forward to seeing the improvement as he grows into his voice over the coming years.
Really very beautiful and available to read for free online! Read the story HERE. And read Nataliya's amazing review HERE (she says it so perfectly it mReally very beautiful and available to read for free online! Read the story HERE. And read Nataliya's amazing review HERE (she says it so perfectly it makes any further words on the subject kind of redundant).
“Hello, lovely to meet you. My name is Chris, but I’m here on Goodreads under the ‘handle’ of Clouds be
If you’ve not read one of my reviews before:
“Hello, lovely to meet you. My name is Chris, but I’m here on Goodreads under the ‘handle’ of Clouds because I thought it was a rather nifty moniker – one which captures neatly what stories are to me: subjective shapes seen in the random patterns of clouds, snatched down and bound with words to share with friends over a good cuppa.
Some of my reviews are firmly on-topic, but others tend to waffle and wander. I’m a firm believer that a readers opinion of a book is rooted solidly in what’s going on in their life at that time, and what elements of the book resonate with their experiences. So I think it’s good to have a bit of context around a review, and a reviewer.
OK – OK – I’ve prevaricated enough... We’re having another baby! I’ve wanted to share that for a while :-)
This is the book I was reading when we found out and for me it will always be emotionally linked with that delightful discovery – any and all opinions expressed here are tinged with the pride and joy that comes bundled up with the expectation of a new baby!
This will be our second and I adore being a Dad. I could talk about this all day...
Will you shut-up already and tell me something about the book?!
*Sigh...*
If you’ve never read any of Peter Hamilton’s work – Great North Road would be an interesting place to start. He’s a writer of epic space-opera, with big emphasis on the EPICNESS of it all. He generally writes series, with each book in the series being a ‘kitten-squisher’ unto itself. He’s good – in my opinion, very, very good. I’d go out on a limb and call him the best sci-fi author to never win a big award.
So if you’ve not yet read any of his work – good move checking him out. But would I start here? Great North Road is a stand-alone novel, not part of a series, so it’s less of a commitment. But this is still a HUGE book, and it has some inevitable pacing issues as a consequence of that– so, on reflection, this is probably not the best place to start.
I’d recommend Mindstar Rising as a yummy first taste. Yes, it’s the first in the Greg Mandel series, but it’s a closed-ending story – not dependant on the sequels. They’re space-opera detective stories about a military prototyped psychic private-eye, working for a downloaded-personality whose body has been murdered – in a near-future, global-warming flooded, post-revolution England. They’re excellent books, and half the size, half the complexity, half the reader-calories of his ‘big’ works.
Most people who’ve ended up here are probably existing Hamilton fans. You’ve probably read Night’s Dawn, The Commonwealth Saga and/or The Void Trilogy and are wondering how this one ranks against them. Well, I’ve read all his works (except one short story collection and an old, rare YA book) and have him listed on my literary Pantheon of very favouritest authors – so I’m probably well qualified to field this one.
Let me allay any fears to start with – it’s good, alright! If the four star rating didn’t already tell you that! It’s not perfect, but it’s a damn fine book.
It’s near future (compared with his other works). Humans have wormhole technology and have branched out to other worlds (so far, so Hamilton). The story focuses on just Earth, and one other planet St Libra, which is very restrained for Hamilton.
The alien angle is interesting – humans have encountered something called the ‘Zanth’ which is like... a weird-cool giant quantum crystal space-plague THING! It comes out of nowhere, starts crashing rocks into planets which grow, encase everything, and then absorb them... it’s not sentient in any known way, but it only seems to target inhabitated planets and there’s no way to fight it... the human effort is based on stalling the Zanth while we try and evacuate the afflicted planet. None of this is a spoiler because Great North Road isn’t about the Zanth at all, it’s just an incidental thing going on in this universe that I thought was very cool!
This books revolves around the Norths: a human clone army/family/business. They’re megarich. They run a whole industrial planet. They all look identical. One of them turns up dead in the river. All hell breaks loose. The story is set in Newcastle, which was a very nice touch (gotta love the Geordie vernacular) and one major thread follows Sid, the cop on the case. It’s the biggest case ever. Limitless budget, some very nice police technology – a good sci-fi C.S.I. thread, and Sid and his close crew of coppers are a very likeable bunch. The bad-guys have done a top-drawer job though, so this is a tough case to crack and this thread is a little light on the action.
The other major thread covers a military mission to St Libra, the industrial planet run by the North clone corporation. There is evidence to suggest there may be a sentient, hostile alien species somewhere in the jungles of St Libra. St Libra is a frickin’ weird planet, and not long after the mission gets out deep into the tropical jungle, cut-off from all civilization, the cosmological tables get turned in truly epic fashion. This is the ‘action’ thread, but that’s something of a misnomer as this is really a gothic-horror inspired suspense-and-mystery thread. Lots of atmosphere, lots of creepy shapes in the shadows, if you catch my drift. This isn’t Hamilton’s usual style, but I think he handles it very well.
That’s as much as I’m going to share plot-wise- there are a few minor thread characters, some flashbacks, etc, but by-and-large it chugs along on these two axles. I’m also very pleased (and relieved) to say that the ending does not disappoint. There’s always the risk after such a long journey that the conclusion will be anticlimactic, but I thought he did a very solid job of managing the momentum. I guessed the ending just early enough to feel smart, without having it ruined, which probably means he got the foreshadowing spot-on.
It took me an age to read Great North Road, due to other things going on in my life, but it was always a pleasure to dive back into. For me, he’s a writer who never disappoints – big, bold and imaginative, yet his characters are always very human. One of the most underrated sci-fi writers working – and this is an excellent addition to his catalog.
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