Customer Reviews

Burndive

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Waiting for Karin Lowachee to produce a sequel to her outstanding first novel "Warchild" was not easy. Jos and his friends would invade my daydreams. They would sneak up while working or driving or whatever and start dialogs seemingly right in my ear.
Frequently, I reread sections and speculated as to how things might continue. Over the year some satisfying (for me) paths developed and I began to wonder: Was I setting myself up for disappointment?

Well, "Burndive" finally arrived and she did none of what I expected. Instead, she thrust us into the POV of Ryan Azarcon, the rich spoiled son of Cairo Azarcon Captain of the Macedon. Ryan, who was only briefly mentioned in Warchild, was not, despite his own trauma, a sympathetic character. I was not pleased. Then, about a third of the way in she smoothly began weaving him into the Warchild main story. We were back among our friends. We had a couple of newbies to digest. I liked Sid - Ryan was still giving me indigestion - but that would change.

I loved it!

In these first two books (of a trilogy I've been told) Karin Lowachee has taken two totally dissimilar protagonist, from greatly different backgrounds, through different experiences, and brought them to the same place on the same side with a great supporting cast. The characterizations have depth. Their motivations and emotions are well drawn. The storyline has exciting space opera; convoluted politics, betrayals, and assassins in the midst of delicately balanced war and peace.

I'm looking forward to book three.

Burndive is the term for computer hacking in the world that Karin Lowachee has created. The first thing you will notice when reading Burndive is that their is essentially no burndiving in it. This is one of those interesting cases where the publisher must have picked the title, because it has nothing to do with the book. That being said, Burndive is an excellent follow-up to Warchild, this time focusing on the son of the enigmatic Captain Azarcon of the Macedon. Azarcon's 18-year-old son Ryan doesn't know his father, since he has been away his whole life, but his father's politics have led to an attack on Ryan's life which brings them into very close quarters. Burndive is less military scifi and more space opera, but the characters are compelling and deep and excellently drawn. The book is a little slow at first, but ends with a flourish that left me searching Amazon for the unfortunately unavailable sequel. I will be looking forward to it.

...is that what a reader wants and what the author wants are often at odds. What a reader usually wants is more of the same -- more of the characters introduced in the first book, more of the world, generally MORE.

What an author often wants to do is something completely different. S/he wants to explore completely different characters, a different timeline -- anything to distinguish the first book from its follow-up.

I ended up reading this series out of order. I read CAGEBIRD first, then WARCHILD, and now this one. I could see how BURNDIVE might disappoint if followed on the heels of WARCHILD, but I loved it. I thought Lowachee took a huge risk giving us the point of view of spoiled Ryan Azarcon and forcing us, page by page, to care for him. In a way, we were like the Captain... who comes to truly care for his son by degrees.

It's a good book, and a true testimony to Lowachee's writing that I could read them all out of order and not feel like I missed anything.

The son of two very rich and powerful parents, Ryan Azarcon is idolized and envied by the people on Austro station. They don't realize that he is still recovering from the trauma of seeing the wholesale slaughter of the Hong Kong embassy by terrorists. Ryan is not politically savvy and buys into the propaganda of the twenty-year war between the Earth hub and the alien Strits. His father is the captain of the starship Macedon, patrolling deep space against alien incursions and space pirates.

Although he has only met his father three times, Cairo comes to bring his son on board his ship to keep him safe after a failed assassination attempt and over the objections of Ryan and his mother. While on board, he sees his father try to broker a peace between the Strits and the Earth hub and the young man learns that truth is in the eye of the beholder.

It is awesome, believable and moving to see the protagonist turn from a sullen teen into a mature man over the course of this tale. Told in the first person narrative from Ryan's perspective, readers find themselves hoping that the protagonist can overcome all the traumas he has suffered and emerge a mentally healthy person. Readers who like innovative fast-paced and action packed space opera that foster character development will love Burndive.

Harriet Klausner

Great story by Ms. Lowachee but it was marred by the extremely poor conversion to Kindle format. Grammatical and spelling errors are attrocious! A proof-reading of even a cursory nature would have identified hundreds of errors. Unacceptable quality control by Kindle. Check your OCR program! Anyone can see that leading "th" is being converted to an "m".

Warchild was such a gripping book that I feared Lowachee would drop the ball on any sequel. But this one is as compelling, if not quite as haunting.

Seriously, I read a ton of books and this book had to have the most typo's I have ever experienced in a book. I'm not even going to bother rating the story because it's not worth reading when half your time is spent trying to figure out what the sentence means.... Spend a few bucks on a proof reader.

This was a very disappointing follow-up to Warchild. The former book had an interesting setting, deep characters, and a fairly unique plot. This sequel has none of those things. The protagonist has got to be one of the least interesting characters in any book I've ever read. You know its bad when you're looking forward to the scenes with his bodyguard because that character has some personality! The entire book is much ado about nothing; little happens, the descriptions are vanilla and repetitive. The only thing it has to recommend it is how it offers a different perspective on events in the far-superior first book, and that's not enough to carry it.

This book was mind blowing it didnt start off all that fast more like just catching speed. I felt so bad for the father but in the end it shows not all rich stitches are all that bad. The book was absolutely great. It takes you right into story almost movie like you should totaly read it.

It just keeps on getting better.