Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An unusual ending for an unusual species, August 15, 2003
In retrospect, I suspect I should *not* have been surprised by the ending of the book; in a sense, the ending--and the coda which follows it--were set up in the very first book in the trilogy, "Cosmonaut Keep." The central theme of this book appears to be irony, from first page to last. MacLeod has created a bizarre universe, populated with many different creatures, including saurs, krakens, selkies, and, perhaps the most alien of all, the eight-legged Multipliers. There's a lot of intriguing ideas jammed in here. Unfortunately, all those ideas, in a book this short, mean that a lot of characters get short shrift. Likewise, the book isn't long enough to stand on its own; why certain characters behave the way they do doesn't really make sense unless you've read the previous two books. Thus, the series ends leaving a lot of questions (not the least of which is why the book is written in the present tense when, and only when, Matt Cairns is the viewpoint character). All in all, though, if you've read the first two books, you'll probably want to read this one just to see how it ends. If you haven't, start with "Cosmonaut Keep" and "Dark Light" before reading this one.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A disappointment, May 5, 2003
The book reads like an afterthought rather than a culmination to an interesting trilogy. The plot seems more designed to finish the series than to build to a satisfactory climax and the last chapters bring in a deus ex machina that makes little sense. One gets the impression that Macleod became tired of the series.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid conclusion to a neat SF trilogy, March 7, 2003
_Engine City_ concludes Ken MacLeod's second novel series, together called Engines of Light. In the first two novels (_Cosmonaut Keep_ and _Dark Light_) we learned that an asteroid passing near Earth in the mid-21st Century contained intelligent nano-bacteria, who collectively had the intelligence of a god. These beings made available to an international team of cosmonauts a starship, which they took hundreds of thousands of light years to a planet called Mingulay. There they learned that they were only the latest of many waves of colonization of that area of the galaxy, apparently all at the doing of the gods. This "second sphere" was inhabited by humans from ancient Babylon, for example, and by humans from more recent historical eras, and by intelligent dinosaurs, and by other hominids such as pithkies (Australopithecus). Travel in the Second Sphere is dominated by starships run by intelligent giant squid (the Krakens) and by the saurs, but the new Cosmonauts have a starship, if they can only figure out how to navigate it. In the second book, having learned to navigate the Bright Star, they travel to nearby Croatan (home of the lost Roanoke colony), and there the politically active, long-lived, cosmonauts naughtily foment a rebellion, while also contacting the local gods, and learning some scary secrets about the gods, and about other 8-legged aliens. In _Engine City_ MacLeod works diligently to knit together the various threads of the first two books. In fact, at times the book seems too busy, too full of new ideas only a few of which would have sufficed for a full novel. By the end, however, he does draw things to a fairly satisfying conclusion (only to blow it up again in a clever SF-referential last chapter -- not, though, a harbinger of further books in the series but rather something of a wink (or perhaps grimace) at the reader). At any rate _Engine City_ involves the Bright Star and other new starships establishing a new trading culture, threatening the established hegemony of the kraken-controlled ships of Nova Babylonia. One of the most cynical of the old cosmonauts makes his way to Nova Babylonia to foment a new rebellion, on essentially Stalinist terms. The sinister 8-legged aliens turn up, offering immortality, but at what cost? The gods are provoked. A terrible war is threatened. In general, pretty neat stuff, but I felt the book was a bit rushed, and a bit too packed. I'd rather have focussed more on some of the individual characters. Still, MacLeod has definitely met his obligations to the series reader by answering all the questions he earlier raised. Not a great book but a good one. I continue to eagerly buy MacLeod's new books as they appear.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
