Intriguing tale of an alternate England whose global empire rests on the magical use of language, words engraved on silver bars. The style is semi-schIntriguing tale of an alternate England whose global empire rests on the magical use of language, words engraved on silver bars. The style is semi-scholarly and employs footnotes, similar to the way Susanna Clarke does in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I always enjoy :)
Other reviewers have complained that the author is too politically heavy-handed, and that the book reads rather like a polemic rather than a novel, but I disagree. Separating the British Empire's colonial exploitation from its real-world historical basis lets it be examined in a different way, makes it stand out more vividly somehow, kind of like how a scientist might isolate one component out of many to be able to look at it more closely.
The four main characters, all of whom are "outsiders" in different ways, are each distinct and believable in their actions and motives; so is their friendship, and how it evolves and changes (and eventually is broken). The ending wasn't at all what I expected -- it was much more...dramatic, I guess, and momentous, in that it was far beyond what you'd expect from a bunch of college kids. But sometimes, it seems, a revolution requires revolutionaries....more
List every conspiracy theory you've ever heard: that Atlantis exists, that fluoride in the water makes you stupid, that 9/11 was an inside job, that tList every conspiracy theory you've ever heard: that Atlantis exists, that fluoride in the water makes you stupid, that 9/11 was an inside job, that there's a secret cabal running the world, that the government is illicitly controlling the weather/history/people's minds, that at least some of the so-called crazy people locked up in psycho wards are there because they know something.... Link them all together in a deeply implausible but totally internally-consistent narrative. Throw in a love story, mix in some super-duper high-tech, season with suspense, add a dash of some serious questions (how we deal with guilt, for example), and set the cruise control at about 90 mph.
This fun-house of a book is what you get: unpredictable, loopy, madcap, occasionally touching and thought-provoking, and a heck of a lot of fun to read.
(Disclosure: I received this in a GR giveaway.)...more
A fantastic melange of philosophy, physics, dystopian near-future, and love story. The author does an impressive job of weaving together different strA fantastic melange of philosophy, physics, dystopian near-future, and love story. The author does an impressive job of weaving together different strands of...well, of space-time, incorporating minor discrepancies that can easily slip right by the careless reader and building not one world but three subtly different ones that nevertheless cleanly interlock. And he does it all while making you care about the characters and intensely curious about What Happens Next.
The remarkable thing for me personally was how many little connections popped up with my own life. One of the subplots in the book involves companies mining people's online profiles and activity for information in order to customize their various experiences, from shopping to dining out to romantic matches. I felt almost like somebody had mined my life for details to customize this book, because there were so many passing mentions of things I know and love -- from Firefly to comment code, from Ayn Rand to arXiv, and of course the long nerdy discussions of physics and the multiverse and the perils of turning over too much of our lives to mindless algorithms, it was all there. Even the little sidebars about race, how we see it and how we don't, were apropos.
It's also one of those books in which the end makes you rethink everything that came before it (kind of like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows lol). The minute I finished the book I turned right back to the beginning to skim the first few chapters again, and was impressed at how tightly the story was knit together -- how little bits of the resolution are present even in the beginning. I also didn't fully realize the significance of the ending until about half an hour after I finished it, which was kind of neat. There's the obvious meaning of the ending, wherein the main character's actions tie up all the obvious loose ends, but then there's a second level at which those actions had an effect, which took longer to sink in.
If I could give this book six stars, I would. ...more
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