Reviews

Good story and characters. I wish it didn't lean so hard on the false pop-sci idea of quantum. It turns an otherwise hard sci-fi story into soft sci-fi with some cringy scenes.

Derek Künsken returns to the universe of The Quantum Evolution for his third of four planned volumes The Quantum War. Although readers of Kunsken’s works may also know that this series links to his most recent book, The House of Styx, set five hundred years before. Of the three Quantum Evolution books The Quantum War rests most heavily on that book with much of the action taking place in the skies of Venus.
This volume opens shortly after the events of The Quantum Garden. The war that Belasarius Arjona had a hand in starting is gathering momentum. As part of that war, and directly as a result of the events of The Quantum Garden, the Congregate has captured one hundred and fifty of Arjona’s fellow homo quantus and is modifying them to pilot their fighters. Arjona hatches a plan to rescue the survivors – a plan that will mean using himself as bait putting his old team (from The Quantum Magician) back together and relying on a group of very unreliable Puppets to help him.
Despite following directly on from the previous book, The Quantum War takes a while to get going. This is because Künsken has to catch readers up on what has been going on in the broader galaxy. The book also jumps between the present and the action of a few months before to tell the story of the man kidnapped by the Congregate to find a way to weaponize the homo quantus. Once Arjona has organized to be captured and the plan starts to tick into place, the story kicks into a high gear that it never gets out of.
Künsken has demonstrated over and over again his love of heist mechanics and his ability to keep a bunch of different plot strands in motion as events play out. As always, nothing goes exactly to plan and the team have to either improvise or sacrifice in order to swing the action back in their favour. And as always, there is a range of colourful supporting characters and moustache-twirling villains. And much of the action takes place in the skies of Venus, a milieu that Künsken is incredibly comfortable in. But there is more to this than the action. Debates about religion, evolution and free will rage between the variously genetically engineered characters.
The Quantum War is another fun entry in this constantly surprising series. With one more volume expected it will be interesting to see how Künsken brings the series home. At the same time, waiting for the sequel to House of Styx to start to show how the family that we were rooting for in that volume became the foundation of the villains of this piece.

kevinscorner's review

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4.5

I probably enjoyed The Quantum War the best of the 3 books in the series so far. It was action-packed, suspenseful, and thrilling. And being the third book in the series, it isn’t bogged down by much explaining or exposition anymore.

Told on two timelines 4 months apart, I could have used less of the earlier Conglomerate timeline and it could have just been merged with the current timeline of the Homo quantus and the Union. Also, I would have liked to have seen more of Belisarius, but the book did give us a lot more of the Conglomerate’s perspective this time around.

The Quantum War is the most plot-focused and action-packed of the series, but I did miss the more introspective aspects we get from Belisarius.

*Addendum: This book needed another editing pass through because there were numerous spelling errors and typos throughout.