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bulwerka's review against another edition
3.0
Time travel, imminent disaster, action, mystery, love, and loss all percolate through Gary Gibson’s book Final Days. You might say to yourself, wow, that must make for one heck of a thrill ride, and in truth the book makes a valiant effort, but in the end it just barely falls short. Ambiguity, wooden characters, and a slightly unimpressive world hinder what could have been a really great foundation.
The book starts off at a mysterious archaeology dig, wherein an accident to one of the researchers, Mitchell Stone, blows wide open the mystery of the book. We are then introduced to a washed up agent named Saul Dumont, who is about to have one of his operations collapse in his face.
The crux of the story revolves around the fact that wormholes have opened up the wider galaxy, and one of the side effects is that opening a wormhole to a ship in transit to another world propels a person forward in subjective time (think relativity as you approach the speed of light, yeah it made my head hurt too). Because of this, people from these times in the near future are aware of Earth’s imminent demise.
A coming together of events bring Saul and Mitchell, once former colleagues, back together to help solve the mystery and save Humanity. With your standard twists and turns along the way.
Now, I must say that the premise drew me in and kept me going through this book. The way it opens and the way it ends were exciting, mysterious, and ultimately compelling. It’s too bad that middle section is so…blah.
Starting with the characters, Saul is a tortured drug addict who lost his family, Mitchell is aloof and disappears for most of the book, and the “love” interest is shoehorned in so forcibly and removed so quickly I can’t even recall her name.
It should make for compelling reading that Saul has to overcome his disadvantages to make things work, but really he becomes almost annoying. He complains in his inner voice about temptation and not wanting to give into demons, but then just dives right in. Defeating the purpose of the inner dialogue.
The introduction and removal of characters distracts from the fact that this story is about Saul, and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that he is the main character. The only time this is enjoyable is right at the end, when the best characters of the book enter for a brief, but important, part of the story.
These characters enter, move, and exit a narrative tapestry that is full of motion and at times tension, but without real purpose. I felt that Saul and Mitchell flail about for a couple hundred pages until the climax.
The setting has technology and gadgets that make navigating the world effortless and quick, so the reader is certainly transported all over the place. However, there really isn’t much to this travel, almost like Gibson just kind of chooses a place and shrugs, saying that’s as good as any place for these characters to go.
The story picks up and is very exciting right at the end, and redeems a lot of the pointless running around that happens in the middle portion of the book. There is a little bit of redemption in the end and a satisfying conclusion to some parts of the narrative. That being said, you get done and you are a little dissatisfied that there wasn’t even really a hint of what was going on in the larger picture.
This is supposed to be the first novel in a broader saga, but I’m still on the fence on whether I want to continue. In one sense I want to learn more about this world and the mystery contained in it. On the other hand, I wasn’t impressed enough to immediately crave the next book.
All in all, I give it fairly mediocre marks. I can see glimpses of something larger and cooler, but frankly I felt pretty meh about the whole thing.
Final Verdict: C-
Glimpses of something larger, but frankly pretty bland
(see this review and more at SciFi Readers)
The book starts off at a mysterious archaeology dig, wherein an accident to one of the researchers, Mitchell Stone, blows wide open the mystery of the book. We are then introduced to a washed up agent named Saul Dumont, who is about to have one of his operations collapse in his face.
The crux of the story revolves around the fact that wormholes have opened up the wider galaxy, and one of the side effects is that opening a wormhole to a ship in transit to another world propels a person forward in subjective time (think relativity as you approach the speed of light, yeah it made my head hurt too). Because of this, people from these times in the near future are aware of Earth’s imminent demise.
A coming together of events bring Saul and Mitchell, once former colleagues, back together to help solve the mystery and save Humanity. With your standard twists and turns along the way.
Now, I must say that the premise drew me in and kept me going through this book. The way it opens and the way it ends were exciting, mysterious, and ultimately compelling. It’s too bad that middle section is so…blah.
Starting with the characters, Saul is a tortured drug addict who lost his family, Mitchell is aloof and disappears for most of the book, and the “love” interest is shoehorned in so forcibly and removed so quickly I can’t even recall her name.
It should make for compelling reading that Saul has to overcome his disadvantages to make things work, but really he becomes almost annoying. He complains in his inner voice about temptation and not wanting to give into demons, but then just dives right in. Defeating the purpose of the inner dialogue.
The introduction and removal of characters distracts from the fact that this story is about Saul, and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that he is the main character. The only time this is enjoyable is right at the end, when the best characters of the book enter for a brief, but important, part of the story.
These characters enter, move, and exit a narrative tapestry that is full of motion and at times tension, but without real purpose. I felt that Saul and Mitchell flail about for a couple hundred pages until the climax.
The setting has technology and gadgets that make navigating the world effortless and quick, so the reader is certainly transported all over the place. However, there really isn’t much to this travel, almost like Gibson just kind of chooses a place and shrugs, saying that’s as good as any place for these characters to go.
The story picks up and is very exciting right at the end, and redeems a lot of the pointless running around that happens in the middle portion of the book. There is a little bit of redemption in the end and a satisfying conclusion to some parts of the narrative. That being said, you get done and you are a little dissatisfied that there wasn’t even really a hint of what was going on in the larger picture.
This is supposed to be the first novel in a broader saga, but I’m still on the fence on whether I want to continue. In one sense I want to learn more about this world and the mystery contained in it. On the other hand, I wasn’t impressed enough to immediately crave the next book.
All in all, I give it fairly mediocre marks. I can see glimpses of something larger and cooler, but frankly I felt pretty meh about the whole thing.
Final Verdict: C-
Glimpses of something larger, but frankly pretty bland
(see this review and more at SciFi Readers)
wynnz's review against another edition
3.0
It took me a little while to wrap my mind around this perplexing time travel paradox. Wormholes and ancient artifacts are all good ingredients for a fascinating read. These are all thought-provoking ideas. The premise was interesting and intriguing, but sadly the narrative went in another direction and left me with more questions than answers. The characters were decent enough, the story was engaging, and there was an exciting and mysterious element to the story, but it ultimately turned into a game of cat and mouse, and betrayal.
I felt that the most important questions were left unanswered, unless the author wanted me to use my imagination, which I'm sadly lacking, and need to be taken by the hand and guided to the conclusion. I just felt a little disappointed.
I felt that the most important questions were left unanswered, unless the author wanted me to use my imagination, which I'm sadly lacking, and need to be taken by the hand and guided to the conclusion. I just felt a little disappointed.
markyon's review against another edition
4.0
Gary’s latest, his fifth novel, is a novel of future apocalypse and wormholes. Written in a fast paced style from a number of different people’s viewpoints, it is a cracking holiday read.
The story is set in 2235. The key premise of the tale is that wormholes, if one end is accelerated to relativistic speeds, can allow people to travel hundreds of light years quickly. People who travel outside the gate can eventually catch up with the people who have travelled through the gate but only by travelling at standard speeds. Thus we appear to travel in time, with those going through the wormholes able to travel into the future, so to speak.
We start the novel with an expedition. One of the things that wormhole travel has allowed humans to do is explore places far from Earth. There are relics out in the universe of other races, though seemingly long gone, which are being carefully explored. When an expedition is sent to Vault 17 in Gate Delta, a now-deserted Gateway of wormholes, Jeff Cairns sees two of their members seemingly killed, but then, moments later, one of them, Mitchell Stone, re-appears.
This is one of many mysteries the wormholes seem to have. On Earth, the loss of a wormhole connection to the Galileo colony a few years back, for reasons unknown, is another that has become a concern. The two places have yet to be re-connected (and as time goes on may or may not be due to what is happening on Earth.) Saul Dumont knows this better than anyone. He’s still trying to cope with the loss of the wormhole link to the Galileo system, which has stranded him on Earth far from his wife and child for the past several years.
Only weeks away from the link with Galileo finally being re-established, he stumbles across a conspiracy to suppress the discovery of a second, alien network of wormholes.
Things are complicated further when we discover the reason for the second expedition’s secrecy. They have travelled to the near future of 2245 and discovered a devastated, lifeless solar system - all except for the original Mitchell Stone, found preserved in a cryogenics chamber on Luna. Not only that but it seems that Earth has little time left. From video footage taken in the future, Copernicus City on the Moon is seen in ruins. Strange plant-like growths are seen mushrooming out of the Earth’s oceans, causing the Earth to be swathed in cloud and apparently killing all life beneath them. The Earth seems doomed, with most of its population unlikely to survive.
Saul realises that to stop further destruction, he has to shut down all the gateways, before the damage reaches the colonies. Fighting to get to the Moon to do this, he finds himself in a battle against one of the Mitchell Stones who seems equally keen to stop him.
This is a big Niven-esque type disaster novel, or perhaps a Greg Bear (Forge of God springs to mind), so much so that it really needs one of those dramatis personae lists at the front. Though there are the main characters, a number of others are there to help develop the plot, which are a little more less developed and can take careful following.
It’s also a book that you have to just accept at the beginning, even when things don’t always make immediate sense travelling forward and backward in time. It’s a tale that needs a while to set the scene and develop. Of course, as we have ‘seen’ video from 2245, we know what is going to happen: if the title of the book doesn’t give it away, it does seem that the future is set and unchangeable, though this is never as clear-cut as it sounds.
However by the mid-point of the book, this tale’s up and running and it’s a fast, exciting read with a dramatic twist towards the end and some very interesting developments which will no doubt be explored further in the next book.
I liked this a lot, in that it’s a plot-driven old-school type of tale with some great new ideas to make it work. I think this is Gary’s best to date, and look forward to the next in the series.
The story is set in 2235. The key premise of the tale is that wormholes, if one end is accelerated to relativistic speeds, can allow people to travel hundreds of light years quickly. People who travel outside the gate can eventually catch up with the people who have travelled through the gate but only by travelling at standard speeds. Thus we appear to travel in time, with those going through the wormholes able to travel into the future, so to speak.
We start the novel with an expedition. One of the things that wormhole travel has allowed humans to do is explore places far from Earth. There are relics out in the universe of other races, though seemingly long gone, which are being carefully explored. When an expedition is sent to Vault 17 in Gate Delta, a now-deserted Gateway of wormholes, Jeff Cairns sees two of their members seemingly killed, but then, moments later, one of them, Mitchell Stone, re-appears.
This is one of many mysteries the wormholes seem to have. On Earth, the loss of a wormhole connection to the Galileo colony a few years back, for reasons unknown, is another that has become a concern. The two places have yet to be re-connected (and as time goes on may or may not be due to what is happening on Earth.) Saul Dumont knows this better than anyone. He’s still trying to cope with the loss of the wormhole link to the Galileo system, which has stranded him on Earth far from his wife and child for the past several years.
Only weeks away from the link with Galileo finally being re-established, he stumbles across a conspiracy to suppress the discovery of a second, alien network of wormholes.
Things are complicated further when we discover the reason for the second expedition’s secrecy. They have travelled to the near future of 2245 and discovered a devastated, lifeless solar system - all except for the original Mitchell Stone, found preserved in a cryogenics chamber on Luna. Not only that but it seems that Earth has little time left. From video footage taken in the future, Copernicus City on the Moon is seen in ruins. Strange plant-like growths are seen mushrooming out of the Earth’s oceans, causing the Earth to be swathed in cloud and apparently killing all life beneath them. The Earth seems doomed, with most of its population unlikely to survive.
Saul realises that to stop further destruction, he has to shut down all the gateways, before the damage reaches the colonies. Fighting to get to the Moon to do this, he finds himself in a battle against one of the Mitchell Stones who seems equally keen to stop him.
This is a big Niven-esque type disaster novel, or perhaps a Greg Bear (Forge of God springs to mind), so much so that it really needs one of those dramatis personae lists at the front. Though there are the main characters, a number of others are there to help develop the plot, which are a little more less developed and can take careful following.
It’s also a book that you have to just accept at the beginning, even when things don’t always make immediate sense travelling forward and backward in time. It’s a tale that needs a while to set the scene and develop. Of course, as we have ‘seen’ video from 2245, we know what is going to happen: if the title of the book doesn’t give it away, it does seem that the future is set and unchangeable, though this is never as clear-cut as it sounds.
However by the mid-point of the book, this tale’s up and running and it’s a fast, exciting read with a dramatic twist towards the end and some very interesting developments which will no doubt be explored further in the next book.
I liked this a lot, in that it’s a plot-driven old-school type of tale with some great new ideas to make it work. I think this is Gary’s best to date, and look forward to the next in the series.
crofly's review
4.0
I was lucky to receive this book through a Goodreads giveaway. It is a highly entertaining and imaginative work of science fiction. It depicts a future of space and time exploration, where many of the planets in our galaxy are habitable. It also features a unique plant-like alien species. The plot is a bit of "Star Trek" combined with "24." There is a mystery that centers around a character that was presumed dead. Gary Gibson is very effective at developing engaging characters and keeping you guessing regarding where their loyalties are. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good space opera with a modern twist and spy thriller tendencies.
books17's review against another edition
3.0
Not a bad read. Like a lot of science fiction my tiny child mind had some problems coming to grips with the time travel mechanics in the novel; I mean, not to the point where it impacted on my enjoyment of the story or anything, but I like to have all the science nailed down in a book like this, and I just couldn't parse it. But whatever, book was pretty neat, I like the idea of STARTING with the apocalypse rather than culminating with it, will be interested to read the next one.
It did take me a long time to get into, though.
It did take me a long time to get into, though.
mw2k's review against another edition
2.0
Interesting core idea and it is compelling enough to hold you until the end, but it's one of those near future SF books, where all the military are full-blown hard-asses, all the corporate suits are 100% ruthless demons, threatening everyone and everything with death for "knowing too much". Everyone gets captured and then escapes least twice. There's no particular standout character in this book and you never really care about any of their motives or wants.
And it's 2235 AD and cars still run on ethanol? Nah...you have man-sized fusion generators but cars run on ethanol they generate themselves from eating grass?
Apart from the core concept, the other ideas aren't fully developed and there's a lot of dead ends and undeveloped plotlines.
An interesting mess all up.
And it's 2235 AD and cars still run on ethanol? Nah...you have man-sized fusion generators but cars run on ethanol they generate themselves from eating grass?
Apart from the core concept, the other ideas aren't fully developed and there's a lot of dead ends and undeveloped plotlines.
An interesting mess all up.
marktimmony's review against another edition
4.0
I <3 Gary Gibson and I want to live in his vision(s) of the future.
ponga's review
2.0
Too action-oriented and focused on cool visuals for me, especially as the physics feels wrong, and various highly advanced technologies seem to have had minimal impact on Gibson's future society as compared with the present day. (Essentially, it's West vs East with cooler toys.)
Apart from not even handwaving the construction, care and maintenance of exotic matter bridges, and casually tossing off transporting wormhole ends at near-C velocities (the energy budget of that seems about as far advanced from Gibson's portable tokamaks as they would be from coal fires), I got really annoyed with his reversal of which wormhole end permits future directed time travel, and didn't much care for single world determinism as a consequence of closed timelike curves.
But if you're looking for action and don't care too much about the motivations of characters or the internal consistency of the world building, the book might work for you.
Apart from not even handwaving the construction, care and maintenance of exotic matter bridges, and casually tossing off transporting wormhole ends at near-C velocities (the energy budget of that seems about as far advanced from Gibson's portable tokamaks as they would be from coal fires), I got really annoyed with his reversal of which wormhole end permits future directed time travel, and didn't much care for single world determinism as a consequence of closed timelike curves.
But if you're looking for action and don't care too much about the motivations of characters or the internal consistency of the world building, the book might work for you.
vmp5062's review
3.0
This book had a lot of exciting things about it. Quite a few of the characters were fully formed and I enjoyed the multiple perspectives. I really enjoyed some of the ambiguity of the ending, however I believe the book could have easily added five pages earlier.