Customer Reviews

Endless Blue

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a big fan of Wen Spencer's books, really liked Tinker and Wolf who Rules, and while Endless Blue is good, it's not at the same level. I found the "world" confusing to the point of annoyance because I couldn't figure out what was going on, but the characters - especially Mikhail and Turk and their relationship - were wonderfully engaging. So engaging the book got 4 stars instead of 3. I CARED about what was happening to them. My involvement in the characters literally pulled me from page to page.

After the first few chapters the book splits to follow Mikhail and Turk separately and while usually this means having to read about one uninteresting character until you can read about the interesting character, I found myself fully engaged with both plots. That being said, whenever descriptions of the "world" popped up I just skipped them until I reached dialogue which contained all the info I really needed to know to follow the plot.

Overall I liked it and would recommend it, but be prepared for a world that makes no sense and characters that are so engaging you read the whole book any way.

Captain Mikhail Volkov has a lot to prove. His 'father,' Tsar Ivan Volkov, is distant and unloving and ruler of the Novaya Rus Empire, and is a clone of the legendary Tsar Viktor, just the same as Mikhail. Mikhail, heir presumptive, has had a career that has been less than stellar, marred by a poor psych exam that has denied him an important posting in the past. But he hopes to try to live up to his genetics when he's assigned a possible suicide mission. A warp engine of a ship that was MIA years ago suddenly warps back into known space. They can send a ship back along its mysterious route, but are not sure where it came from... suspecting a pocket-universe of some kind. Novaya Rus and and its allies in the United Colonies forces are in a losing battle with the alien nefrim. It's imperative to know if the nephrim are involved in this phenomenon and if it's something that may help their war effort.

Along with Captain Mikhail is his 'brother' Turk, a creche-born adapted humanoid called a Red that are used as soldiers, without all the rights of true humans, who was raised alongside with Mikhail. The hazards of this mission into the unknown, along with a mutinous plot among the newly acquired Reds, trying to cope with the unknown conditions of the new world and actually trying to complete their mission and find out if there is a way back to their universe is all fascinating. Mikhail and Turk also have to deal with their personal demons and with the social issues that contribute to them. The setting of the Sargasso, the watery pocket-universe with floating islands and settlements grown around the wrecks of great starships is also intriguing.

I would happily read more books about this universe (and pocket-universe).

Wen Spencer's eighth novel, Endless Blue, can be read as simply a fast-paced, engaging scince fiction novel...but that misses half the fun. Under the action, well-realized characters, and thoroughly unique setting are the kind of questions that science fiction was originally invented to ask. What is the nature of humanity? How do we define, and choose, good or evil? Is there a meaning to the cosmos, and do we have a place within it? What is God?

Set in a far-distant future, this is Spencer's first "Pure" science fiction novel. The action is fast enough that it is almost impossible not to read it quickly, but the writing is worth a closer look. Earlier novels have boasted some excellent lines, but the writing here is consistently tight without sacrificing poetry.

One caveat: while her "Alien Taste" series is PG to PG-13, and the Tinker Duology is rated R, this book is R shading into NC-17. While occassionally graphic, it is never gratuitous, but I would not be comfortable recommending it to readers much under 18.

Wow, this book even sums itself up at the end, "We shook the universe and saw what fell out". I pre-ordered this book off Amazon but it took me until tonight to read it. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. Sargasso does seem confusing at first and it's hard to wrap your mind around islands in the sky, called vimana. Once you understand what vimana are, it gets easier. If you've seen Star Trek, or perhaps other sci-fi, it's easier to picture the floating bits of land in the sky and a place that goes on and one with no horizon. The characters are great and I eagerly await a sequel. I'll wait for as long as it takes her, as long as I waited for this one, which is about a year or more. Wen Spencer is a writer to watch, read and embrace.

The appearance of the warp drive from a lost spaceship begins a quest for the rest of the ship in ENDLESS BLUE, which tells of genocide, a desperate quest, and Captain Mikhail Volkov, who crashes into the Sargasso and discovers a graveyard of rusting spaceships, both human and alien. The Sargasso holds secrets which could save the human race, but now Volkov's ship is damaged and in danger of never making it home - unless Paige, born on the Sargasso and captain of a salvage boat, can help him. Fast action and drama keep ENDLESS BLUE unpredictable and satisfying to the end - and perfect for discriminating science fiction collections.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Endless Blue by Wen Spencer is a rolicking good adventure. The characters, even the minor ones, wrap their fingers around your heart and squeeze. I read it in less than a day, nearly in one sitting. The book enveloped me in it's comprehensive world. Afterwards, I walked around in a daze, shocked to be back in my mundane, comfortable mid-west home.

Once recovered, I read it again, slowly, to savor it and to shake out all the jewels: the imagery, the subtle foreshadowing, the metaphors, the life-relevant themes... One can connect the dots on many different layers. It is truly a story about life, the universe and everything.

Each one of us has to make big decisions based on scant and conflicting data: How do I care for my aging mother? Should I change jobs? Should I marry this guy, or buy that car? WHO do I vote for?

How do we decide? How do we choose?

In this delicious story, Mikhail, Paige, Turk, Hardin, the Nefrim and assorted colorful lesser characters face many quandries. They each have their own variations on decision techniques sprouting from their own strengths, predispositions and flaws. To start with:

In the first chapter we learn that the Nefrim are waging an unprovoked, illogical war against humans. None of their actions make sense. Spaceships disappear. The human alliance is confounded, and losing.
Part of a vanished ship reappears, raising countless questions and answering none. The only clear information is that it contains a familiar, but unregistered "weapon". Are the Nefrim responsible? Are they trying to mass-produce these viable, useful things?
Mikhail is asked to gather his crew and jump into oblivion to find more facts. Faced with scant, conflicting information, the only thing he can sense for sure is a shade of greed lingering over the request.
How does he decide? The stakes are high. If he does nothing, the Nefrim may win. If he goes, he and his crew may disappear, accomplishing nothing for their sacrifice. If he succeeds, he may save the universe. He hedges his bet against the potential greed and jumps.

One choice blossoms into a multitude of life or death challenges and opportunities.

The external conflicts/decisions drive the captivating plot of this book. The beauty of the story sprouts from the internal conflicts. The stakes of each choice, big or small, are deftly woven into the story, and transmute as the characters grow and interact. Each decision alters the players' lives and souls.

In the end, the biggest decisions require the greatest leaps of faith.

Get this book. Read it twice. Once for fun, once to contemplate life and to grow.

This is the most original book I've read in a long time. The concept caught my attention right from the start: where do ships go when they disappear in a warp jump? They go to a pocket universe that's mostly water, where the passengers can't leave and they have to co-exist. And the characters are intriguing, and so are the societies. It's all so well thought out, from how people would behave multiple generations after arriving, to how some very inhuman traits affect their interactions. I particularly enjoyed seeing races with distinctly alien ways of behaving, and seeing how the humans had learned to get along with them. (The small woman displaying stompy-bull body language when dealing with the minotaurs was particularly fun.)

In all, I was delighted, and I would enjoy reading more. But what more could I expect from the author of Alien Taste?

As a novelist myself, I seldom write reviews of other authors' works. I know I hate bad reviews. But I can only express my disappointment in the religiously-toned "preachiness" of this book, which toward the end seems to go out of its way to focus on "God" and lecture about the sacredness of any product of a sperm and egg in the manner of many anti-choicers. But hey, I admit I'm pro-choice, not religious, and would deliberately avoid this kind of book if I'd know this would crop up beforehand.

Aside from this, the writing was surprisingly sloppy, with many poorly-constructed sentences, mistakes in grammar, and word repeats. I'm really surprised by this, since I really enjoyed the Alien Taste books and had high hopes for the premise of this book. I got the feeling that the author never went back over her work to look for such problems.

The author creates a very imaginative world, but the story has many flaws. There are logical inconsistencies and contradictions, there are gaps in the story in which one is left wondering, "Hey, what happened, wasn't so-and-so in that other place? How did he/she get here?" In descriptions of modified humans, the characters will sometimes be unbeatably fast and strong in a fight, and at other times complete pushovers, and the abilities of the opponents don't explain why. The modified humans have contradictory descriptions, sometimes being referred to as "cats" with cat-like DNA, at other times it is made clear these are totally human people with only human DNA. Further, I could never figure out how these modified people that look identical with humans at some times, at other times look obviously and completely different to other characters in the book without any explanation of what is different.

One other criticism I have is that the males in the story do not behave in a way I can identify with.

That said, I think it's a pretty interesting and clever universe and it has a lot of potential. The author just has to get back to the basics by working on the details of her universe and making those details logically consistent, and she might want to get a male editor to help out with the male characters.

This author is usually good but this book is a superb example of her skill. The characters are well drawn and the situations give an examination of racism that is compelling. The book screams for a sequel which I hope will be forthcoming.

I read this book and then immediately read it again. It was really a fun read and full of ideas to think about.