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beefmaster's review against another edition
4.0
I don't often understand the micro of what Roberts is doing, but I usually grasp the macro. He's working at such a technical level that he may as well be working Clarkeian magic.
deaconist's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
bigbeardedbookseller's review against another edition
4.0
When I read the description for this on NetGalley I thought that it would be right up my street, a return to quite hard sci-fi. Space travel, a mysterious object on a distant planet, possibly aliens. What more could I want?
We start out on a gigantic galaxy spanning ice ship and biosphere with beings (future humans?) who can alter their interactions with the passage of time. As this part expands it definitely has a great 70s feel, good hard sci-fi with a couple of shock points thrown in to twist the story.
Then suddenly we’re taken to a dystopian near future USA which is in a lot of trouble, both politically and environmentally. How messed up you ask? Succession and the U.S.S. Donald Trump come to mind.
I don’t want to give too much away for the part set in this near future dystopian version of the USA, but the reveal at the end of the section is slow and well thought out and clicks into place so well with the information that has been slowly given throughout the rest of this section.
Artificial IntelligenceWe are then returned to the ship with the society that it has and this is put through a great upheaval which is linked into the dystopian part and explains a bit more of what happened.
Overall a great read with lots of different levels of approach, depth of thought and adventure together in the best tradition of masters like Philip K Dick makes me want to read more from Adam Roberts.
We start out on a gigantic galaxy spanning ice ship and biosphere with beings (future humans?) who can alter their interactions with the passage of time. As this part expands it definitely has a great 70s feel, good hard sci-fi with a couple of shock points thrown in to twist the story.
Then suddenly we’re taken to a dystopian near future USA which is in a lot of trouble, both politically and environmentally. How messed up you ask? Succession and the U.S.S. Donald Trump come to mind.
I don’t want to give too much away for the part set in this near future dystopian version of the USA, but the reveal at the end of the section is slow and well thought out and clicks into place so well with the information that has been slowly given throughout the rest of this section.
Artificial IntelligenceWe are then returned to the ship with the society that it has and this is put through a great upheaval which is linked into the dystopian part and explains a bit more of what happened.
Overall a great read with lots of different levels of approach, depth of thought and adventure together in the best tradition of masters like Philip K Dick makes me want to read more from Adam Roberts.
weaver461's review
challenging
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
ericlawton's review
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Two books in one.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence and Police brutality
hwright93's review against another edition
4.0
I was kindly given an ARC of this book by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
IRobot vibes! 3.5***
This book was an enjoyable and easy read. I found myself flying through the pages and enjoyed the writing style.
There are two stories in this book.
The first story features technologically advanced humans, that are godlike, lording over other species (and talking cows)! They go on a quest in a giant spaceship to investigate an alien structure. I really liked the names and personalities of these characters but found myself wanting to know more. It was such a short part of the book overall but I felt it was the most interesting part. I wanted to know about their lives on Earth, their ideals, life on the ship etc.
In the second story there's not too many characters which keeps things nice and simple. The characters are believable and the world itself was set in reality. This is a Dystopian world set in a not too distant future where technology has taken over even more of our lives. There's relatable references to covid, Donald Trump and Taylor Swift which grounds you as a reader, giving you something to relate to.
In this story a group of teenagers have created something the government wants. It features millions of people, who are essentially walking vegetables, who if not literally connected to an iPhone cannot function as a human being. Poisoning of the brain has become weaponsied and the new warfare.
The story was interesting but at times the immaturity of the teenagers was a little frustrating as an adult reader (just listen to the people not killing you?!) I wanted to know more about Wesson and the aftermath of their creation. It would have been especially good to hear how story two's world become story 1. I'd have loved to know how that happened as it felt that the 2 stories were just a bit too distant for me.
All in all an enjoyable read.
I scrapbook all of my 5 star reads on my Instagran - green_wonderland_home:
IRobot vibes! 3.5***
This book was an enjoyable and easy read. I found myself flying through the pages and enjoyed the writing style.
There are two stories in this book.
The first story features technologically advanced humans, that are godlike, lording over other species (and talking cows)! They go on a quest in a giant spaceship to investigate an alien structure. I really liked the names and personalities of these characters but found myself wanting to know more. It was such a short part of the book overall but I felt it was the most interesting part. I wanted to know about their lives on Earth, their ideals, life on the ship etc.
In the second story there's not too many characters which keeps things nice and simple. The characters are believable and the world itself was set in reality. This is a Dystopian world set in a not too distant future where technology has taken over even more of our lives. There's relatable references to covid, Donald Trump and Taylor Swift which grounds you as a reader, giving you something to relate to.
In this story a group of teenagers have created something the government wants. It features millions of people, who are essentially walking vegetables, who if not literally connected to an iPhone cannot function as a human being. Poisoning of the brain has become weaponsied and the new warfare.
The story was interesting but at times the immaturity of the teenagers was a little frustrating as an adult reader (just listen to the people not killing you?!) I wanted to know more about Wesson and the aftermath of their creation. It would have been especially good to hear how story two's world become story 1. I'd have loved to know how that happened as it felt that the 2 stories were just a bit too distant for me.
All in all an enjoyable read.
I scrapbook all of my 5 star reads on my Instagran - green_wonderland_home:
oleksandr's review against another edition
5.0
This is a strange SF novel by British writer [a:Adam Roberts|23023|Adam Roberts|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1222988832p2/23023.jpg]. I read it as a part of monthly reading for May 2022 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. This book is nominated for the British SF Association Award in 2022, the author has already won the award three times, but the last two – in 2016 and 2021 for his non-fiction related to SFF genre.
The story starts as an ordinary far-future hard SF (e.g. no faster-than-light travel) and depicts a space-ship Forward and its ‘team’, five meta-humans named after Greek gods. Here readers meet with ‘breaking a fourth wall’ – in order for us, readers to understand the team we are given Greek gods’ names: their fellow crew members called them Pan. To be clear (and at the risk of mere pedantry), the name ‘Pan’ was not the one they actually used. The name they actually used referenced a figure from a different culture-text altogether, one whose mere composition is hundreds of years in the future as I write this. Pan is an approximation, although a reasonable one. They were a figure gifted with magic (in the Clarkean sense of the word) and given responsibility over beasts, birds and plants, but who pursued that responsibility with a zeal that tipped them over into, as the others saw it, eccentricity.
So, it not only references Greek gods for our understanding but also assumes that we are SF readers – the reference to [a:Arthur C. Clarke|7779|Arthur C. Clarke|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1357191481p2/7779.jpg]’s law “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
Forward has 5 persons as its crew, but also an AI called hal (reference to [b:2001: A Space Odyssey|70535|2001 A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)|Arthur C. Clarke|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1432468943l/70535._SY75_.jpg|208362] HAL-9000 I guess) and a varied biome, including pygs, which are part of crew’s diet, even despite they aren’t pig but pygmies. The ship travels to investigate a strange artifact – a mountain-like pillar on a conical base, rising 142 km above the surface of the planet, far above the atmosphere and into space. Presumably, therefore, the artifact represented an alien space elevator, or at least the remnants of one, the tech so high that even these future humans cannot replicate it. Because the structure is reminiscent of Dante’s the mountain of Purgatory, hence the name.
Then our story shifts from the crew of gods to pygs, more precisely a man/pyg named B and his life on the ship, his veneration of gods, his daily living and problems. Moreover, not only pygs are sentient enough to talk, but cows and even chickens, even if the later while talkative and very stupid. So it seems we, the readers, get ourself another generation ship story, not a new rope, after all, [a:Robert A. Heinlein|205|Robert A. Heinlein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1192826560p2/205.jpg] published [b:Orphans in the Sky|25132638|Orphans in the Sky|Robert A. Heinlein|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1021849] in 1963…
Wrong! The story’s setting shifts again, this time much more dramatically – there is a near future (the 2030s) in The United States of Amnesia, where the US is on the brink of civil war and there is a group of five teenagers, who have an own version of internet with something extremely important hidden there. So, we follow the story of one of the teens, a girl Ottoline Barragão, who is from a Christian family, keeps bees and salvages copper wire for their internet. As a person, who can access to the thing hidden inside, she is captured by one of the factions, formally of the federal government. As an additional important issue in this world there are a lot of people damaged by memory-destroying neonicotinoids, initially used as pesticides and later as bio-weapon. if unassisted such people are like patients with Alzheimer’s, but these one have at least a partial solution – they are (brain?) linked to their iPhones, which work like an external memory.
This is a very unusual story, with the ‘space’ part in line with classic SF and the US of Amnesia part closer to techno-thriller like [a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1595482071p2/12581.jpg]’s [b:Little Brother|954674|Little Brother (Little Brother, #1)|Cory Doctorow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349673129l/954674._SY75_.jpg|939584]. The mix is partially explained at the end, but it isn’t supplied on a platter, one has to think it over. And it is great when fiction makes one think! Recommended.
The story starts as an ordinary far-future hard SF (e.g. no faster-than-light travel) and depicts a space-ship Forward and its ‘team’, five meta-humans named after Greek gods. Here readers meet with ‘breaking a fourth wall’ – in order for us, readers to understand the team we are given Greek gods’ names: their fellow crew members called them Pan. To be clear (and at the risk of mere pedantry), the name ‘Pan’ was not the one they actually used. The name they actually used referenced a figure from a different culture-text altogether, one whose mere composition is hundreds of years in the future as I write this. Pan is an approximation, although a reasonable one. They were a figure gifted with magic (in the Clarkean sense of the word) and given responsibility over beasts, birds and plants, but who pursued that responsibility with a zeal that tipped them over into, as the others saw it, eccentricity.
So, it not only references Greek gods for our understanding but also assumes that we are SF readers – the reference to [a:Arthur C. Clarke|7779|Arthur C. Clarke|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1357191481p2/7779.jpg]’s law “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
Forward has 5 persons as its crew, but also an AI called hal (reference to [b:2001: A Space Odyssey|70535|2001 A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)|Arthur C. Clarke|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1432468943l/70535._SY75_.jpg|208362] HAL-9000 I guess) and a varied biome, including pygs, which are part of crew’s diet, even despite they aren’t pig but pygmies. The ship travels to investigate a strange artifact – a mountain-like pillar on a conical base, rising 142 km above the surface of the planet, far above the atmosphere and into space. Presumably, therefore, the artifact represented an alien space elevator, or at least the remnants of one, the tech so high that even these future humans cannot replicate it. Because the structure is reminiscent of Dante’s the mountain of Purgatory, hence the name.
Then our story shifts from the crew of gods to pygs, more precisely a man/pyg named B and his life on the ship, his veneration of gods, his daily living and problems. Moreover, not only pygs are sentient enough to talk, but cows and even chickens, even if the later while talkative and very stupid. So it seems we, the readers, get ourself another generation ship story, not a new rope, after all, [a:Robert A. Heinlein|205|Robert A. Heinlein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1192826560p2/205.jpg] published [b:Orphans in the Sky|25132638|Orphans in the Sky|Robert A. Heinlein|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1021849] in 1963…
Wrong! The story’s setting shifts again, this time much more dramatically – there is a near future (the 2030s) in The United States of Amnesia, where the US is on the brink of civil war and there is a group of five teenagers, who have an own version of internet with something extremely important hidden there. So, we follow the story of one of the teens, a girl Ottoline Barragão, who is from a Christian family, keeps bees and salvages copper wire for their internet. As a person, who can access to the thing hidden inside, she is captured by one of the factions, formally of the federal government. As an additional important issue in this world there are a lot of people damaged by memory-destroying neonicotinoids, initially used as pesticides and later as bio-weapon. if unassisted such people are like patients with Alzheimer’s, but these one have at least a partial solution – they are (brain?) linked to their iPhones, which work like an external memory.
This is a very unusual story, with the ‘space’ part in line with classic SF and the US of Amnesia part closer to techno-thriller like [a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1595482071p2/12581.jpg]’s [b:Little Brother|954674|Little Brother (Little Brother, #1)|Cory Doctorow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349673129l/954674._SY75_.jpg|939584]. The mix is partially explained at the end, but it isn’t supplied on a platter, one has to think it over. And it is great when fiction makes one think! Recommended.
riverwise's review against another edition
4.0
This is a complex novel, that combines two very different stories which on casual inspection appear to have very little to do with each other. Or do they?
The title should clue you in that the novel takes some inspiration from Dante’s classic poem, but it also becomes clear early on that it is also in dialogue with classic SFF - there’s speculation about space elevators followed a few pages later by a namecheck for Arthur C Clarke, gullible misheard as Gully Foyle, and a frequent refrain of “the eagles are coming”. This idea of the past being inherent in the modern is also expressed in the preoccupation with original sin, memory and atonement that saturates the book. It’s also interesting that of the two story strands, the one set earlier in the timeline has a distinctly YA feel, while the later is slower, more philosophical and more adult (to use a poor but easy term). You could tease out something here about how we grow from youth to age, and go back once more to the idea that our past defines our now - without being too spoilery, the reason why characters in the later strand are in the positions they are is embedded in the earlier story.
I might be making it sound very dry here, but it’s worth noting that for all the philosophical musing of one strand and the convulsive violence and upheaval of the other, the novel is told with a lightness of touch and a delight in wordplay and puns that make it a very smooth read. There are frustrations - certain mysteries are left dangling - but overall this is very readable and very thought-provoking. Recommended.
The title should clue you in that the novel takes some inspiration from Dante’s classic poem, but it also becomes clear early on that it is also in dialogue with classic SFF - there’s speculation about space elevators followed a few pages later by a namecheck for Arthur C Clarke, gullible misheard as Gully Foyle, and a frequent refrain of “the eagles are coming”. This idea of the past being inherent in the modern is also expressed in the preoccupation with original sin, memory and atonement that saturates the book. It’s also interesting that of the two story strands, the one set earlier in the timeline has a distinctly YA feel, while the later is slower, more philosophical and more adult (to use a poor but easy term). You could tease out something here about how we grow from youth to age, and go back once more to the idea that our past defines our now - without being too spoilery, the reason why characters in the later strand are in the positions they are is embedded in the earlier story.
I might be making it sound very dry here, but it’s worth noting that for all the philosophical musing of one strand and the convulsive violence and upheaval of the other, the novel is told with a lightness of touch and a delight in wordplay and puns that make it a very smooth read. There are frustrations - certain mysteries are left dangling - but overall this is very readable and very thought-provoking. Recommended.
robertbeeger's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
annarella's review against another edition
3.0
It's one of those case "it's me not the book".
Even if the plot is complex and fascinating, the world building excellent i found it a bit confusing and the story didn't keep my attention.
It's the first book I read by this author and i think that reading his previous work would have helped.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Even if the plot is complex and fascinating, the world building excellent i found it a bit confusing and the story didn't keep my attention.
It's the first book I read by this author and i think that reading his previous work would have helped.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine