Customer Reviews

Heirs Of Earth

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

 

 

With volume 3 of the series arriving just in time, after I got the first two for Xmas, I was able to read the trilogy back to back. Therefore my review reflects the entire saga.

And a saga it was. The authors have managed to instill in me a sense of wonder not felt since I read Startide Rising by David Brin.

Alien lifeforms are truly alien, incomprehensible to humans. If the protagonists themselves can be called human. Broken engrams, nanotech-modified humans, which then get re-designed by a variety of aliens themselves. It raises the question, just what defines "human".

The authors do provide the answer: the sense of racial self, a refusal to NOT be something special in an uncaring cosmos, never accepting defeat - and in the end "I think, therefore I am ... HUMAN".

As another reviewer has commented on one of the previous books, the characters tend not to be very likeable. But, I found that it is possible to identify with them as their reactions to events and their environments and to each other are believable, even understandable as being the result of extreme stress.

The action in the books moves along at a brisk pace, with frequent surprising turns of events. The climax of the saga is a breathtaking ride...

... which then drops off to a quite unsatisfying denouement. I must agree with the previous reviewer who beat me to being the first one to write a review for this book: somehow the authors managed to paint themselves into a corner and they couldn't write themselves out of it. I suppose it's better than the many deus-ex-machina endings found only too often, but not by much.

In the end I couldn't help but think "oh, I guess there will be a book 4 then, eh?" Or I wondered if the authors lost interest in wrapping up things, after the cosmic rollercoaster ride they had taken the readers along before.

My scores would be 4 for Echoes, 5 for Orphans and 3 for Heirs, with an average of 4 stars. 3 stars for Heirs may be a bit harsh, but the ending takes away from an otherwise 5 star story.

When an author uses phrases like "unspeakably evil" or "more then you can imagine" or "beyond your comprehension", they are failing to express any content. That is the problem with this book, the last of the series. After reading the book, you are left with an ending that concludes nothing. The characters are interesting, the plot complex, and the action well written. All of this makes it terribly disappointing the the conclusion never really occurs. The author's painted themselves into a corner that they couldn't think themselves out of and it shows.

I WANTED TO KNOW THE ANSWERS!
And I didn't get them. Nothing was explained or resolved satisfactorily, and I had to wade through very ordinary prose full of proofing errors to reach that conclusion. Characters behaved differently, issues previously raised weren't explored, and things were stated as fact that hadn't featured in the previous books. Infuriating concepts were dumped in at the last gasp in a futile effort to make sense of what had come before.
Please, please, please, Messers Williams and Dix, take the TIME to produce real quality with your next effort; quality like the Evergence trilogy.
What a let down!

As with most trilogies, the first two books prime you with many unanswered questions and build up to a glorious finale. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two books. Well, the third installment in this series is a flop. It left me with a sense of despair in that it didn't answer many of the questions about the Starfish and the Spinners. It also created more (unanswered) questions. I get the feeling they're setting the scene for a fourth novel. I for one won't buy it.

I really enjoyed the first two books of this trilogy, and so I eagerly awaited Heirs of Earth, the final installment. When I finally got my copy, I read it from cover to cover in short order. But this was not necessarily because Heirs is an extremely engaging novel. On the contrary, I found that the momentum built up in the first two novels was most of what carried me through this one.

Now don't get me wrong - Williams and Dix continue to display their very accesible writing style here, making Heirs an enjoyable read. And the story unfolds in a way that is pretty consistent with what went before. But the authors' attempts to convey the Spinners and Starfish as so far advanced as to be unfathomable by mere humans, while perhaps a valid approach to the story, is somewhat less than entertaining. After the third or so passage describing the hyper-advanced alien technology, I felt as if I was reading a child's primer on shapes and colors.

To top it off, not only do we not get any satisfactory description of the characters' encounter with the aliens, we are left with no explanation as to their motivations or even what happens at the end to resolve the situation. Did I get the sense that we, as humans, couldn't comprehend what was going on? Yes. Did I find this interesting or engaging? Not really.

If you've read the first two installments of the trilogy, by all means finish it out. You will want to find out what happens, as I did. But please set your expectations properly - you will be left with resolution, but very few answers.

When I wrote my review of "Orphans of Earth" (a great, if slightly flawed, read), I finished it up by stating: "Finally, I thought the pair has always been a bit weak on endings (and the conclusion of EVERGENCE provided clear evidence for that) which makes me fear how they wrap up this trilogy."

I wish I played the lottery with such a sure hand.

"Heirs of Earth" is terribly, terribly flawed, in so many aspects that 10,000 words would not be enough to list them all. Let's put aside the multitude of spelling and grammatical mistakes that already plagued the second book, but really 'shine' in the third; let's ignore that our heroes learn something important in one chapter, and promptly (and completely) forget about it for the rest of the story, leaving a plot hole that an eighteen-wheeler could drive through sideway; let's forget the out-of-character behaviours, the uneven rhythm, the tossing aside of quite a few scientific principles that were portrayed so deliciously real in the first two volumes... let's just focus on the conclusion.

As a writer, you can only achieve two objectives with your work: communicate an important, unique, insightful message (and create art) - or tell a gripping, exciting story (and create entertainment). At best, you get both.

At worst, you get "Heirs of Earth". Its message is neither particularly unique nor especially profound, but then, it is genre literature, so you do not necessarily expect art. But its conclusion turns the entire trilogy into an utterly pointless, meaningless, disappointing exercise in English. We do not get a resolution (merely an ending), we do not get a satisfactory explanation, and we do not even get a sense of fundamental, self-questioning wonder. What we get is an intentionally obfuscating exercise in writing technique - very skilled, to be sure - that is desperately trying to mask an emptiness, a lack of ideas and interest, and a final stroke of 'cleverness' that is so vacuous and lacking internal logic that one cannot help but feel their trust violated.

Mr. Williams and Mr. Dix are clearly very talented, very skilled authors. Regrettably, every one of their trilogies I have ever read were born in a spectacularly Big Bang - and died in a pitiful whimper - much like the Universe they write about, but without its grandeur. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I am not certain I will trust them a third time.

The few remaining humans, in engram form or otherwise, are caught up in a conflict between two opposing forces of mostly incomprehensible aliens, and the ultimate decision about whether the destiny of the species is organic, or inorganic, or both.

_Heirs of Earth_ by Sean Williams and Shane Dix is the excellent, exciting climax to the trilogy that began with _Echoes of Earth_. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it a satisfying end to the series, though there were some unanswered questions, perhaps unavoidable given the almost unfathomable and deeply alien nature of the Spinners and the Starfish.

In fact, if I had any complaint about the book, it was at the end one never really truly understood what it was the Spinners and the Starfish - collectively known as the Ambivalence to the Yuhl - were doing. Sure, lots of theories were put out by Peter Alander, Caryl Hatzis, and the various engrams, but even at the very end (sorry if this is a spoiler) the reader doesn't know for sure. As I wrote, perhaps that is unavoidable given how vastly alien the authors made the Starfish and Spinners.

That doesn't mean the story is not otherwise excellent. The bulk of the book centered around a desperate mission by Peter, several versions of Caryl (both the original, Sol, and two other engrams of her), and one of the Frank Axford engrams to seek out the Starfish, first to do battle with them with a fleet of hole ships and probes to gain intelligence, then to infiltrate one of their massive vessels and hitch a ride to the Starfish fleet, in hopes of communicating with them, passing information to them about a star system that they have reason to believe to be the Spinner base in hopes of ending their destructive path through the stars. Unsure if they can even get aboard, survive while there, find someone to talk to in the Starfish fleet (rather than be destroyed out of hand), and get the Starfish to believe them, it is a plan with a lot of "ifs," very bold to be sure, but their last, best hope for those engrams and Yuhl who were not fleeing the Starfish front, attempting what some among the Yuhl called the "Species Dream," of finding a permanent home on a planet, hopefully having successfully neutralized or avoided the Starfish threat.

As in the second book, there were a number of surprises, particularly with regards to the Starfish themselves, the true nature of the Yuhl, and to the ultimate abilities of Frank Axford. While there was definitely an ending, the authors did leave room to explore the setting again. If they did, I would be interested in revisiting this universe.

I really enjoyed the trilogy as a whole and would definitely recommend it to anyone.

Heirs of Earth completes a trilogy that successfully delivered exactly what I have alway sought from "hard sf": mind-expanding vistas of space and time, presented with surprising concepts. While it can't quite compete with Benford's Galactic Center series, the gold standard of literate hard sf, it has the great virtue of not making the reader wait ten years for all the volumes to appear.

The chief deficiencies arise not from poor writing, but from one of the central premises, that of the multiply replicated "engrams". This made it difficult to keep the large cast of characters straight. While I found them believable enough, I often had a hard time rooting for them.

But these are quibbles compared to the pleasures this series offers. And while most of the recent crop of sf has inspired only my indifference, I devoured each of these novels as it came out and couldn't wait for the next.

Heirs of Earth, the final volume of Williams and Dix's three book series, continues to provide big ideas, alien cultures, and a gritty "survive if you can" future for humanity.

The human species is nearly extinct, both by its own mistakes (permitting AI technology to get out of hand) and by coming in contact with an alien culture inexplicably bent on destruction. No "true" humans exist. Only one modified individual is in her somewhat original body. Other "humans" are engrams (or copies of engrams), a computer simulation of a real person. Some of the engrams seem more human than others as they begin to break free of their programming or begin taking on more physical bodies.

The authors provide a myriad of encounters with very strange alien species, all of whom are attempting to survive in a hostile universe -- there a hints that two warring species (collectively called the Ambivalence) may be both benefactor and annihilator.

Unfortunately, the novel itself ends, apparently exhausted by its own innovative and interesting ideas. None of the various story threads are knotted at the end and the big concepts merely peter out.

All in all, however, I would recommend the books to others. Williams and Dix have created a weird and awe-inspiring world and truly alien creatures and their philosophies.