Customer Reviews

Mariposa

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

 

 

I have just finished reading two Greg Bear books: City at the End of Time, and Mariposa.
Mariposa is the better book; a tightly plotted political thriller. City at the End of Time is just awful: amorphous and bloated, it makes little sense, and the ending provides no satisfaction at all.
The books share a common trait, though; they are both inferior retreads of previous Bear works.
City at tne End of Time is very similar to the his alternate reality fantasy from the 80's about the young wizard. The second book, The Serpent Mage, is about a world whose foundations are fallling apart and need a new creation to be saved. City has basically the same plot, but with a ridiculous many-worlds pseudo-quantum physics underpinning. Just as in Serpent Mage, the fate of the world lies with "breeds" who have unusual and unexpected powers. The old gods in Serpent Mage have the names of the gods of earth, while in City they are called Typhon, Sangmer, et. al.
Mariposa reads like Queen of Angels, with similar plot devices and even some of the same characters.
The themes---about how technology, computers and medicine will unleash new and sometimes dangerous capabilities, are interesting, but Mariposa says nothing that wasn't said better in Queen of Angels.
Also, like Queen of Angels, Mariposa falls apart near the end with a completely unbelievable, operatic weaving together of the storylines in the book.

By itself, Mariposa is not bad. It's just so disappointing to find a talented and interesting writer with nothing new to say. He could have skipped this one and City and we'd all think the better of him.

Mariposa by Greg Bear is a story laden with complexities. There are a lot of characters of and a lot going on. It's one of those books where you have to mentally keep track of who is where and what's happening. This only adds to the mystery and suspense of the story, allowing you to exercise your brain while enjoying it all. Basically the government is on the verge of financial collapse and the various security agencies are competing against each other for survival. There is also a rogue computer and a hand full of people coping with the fact that the eugenics treatment used to save them is turning some of them into psychopaths. It's like reading four books at the same time, though everything is well connected and the randomness of events keeps the suspense tuned on high throughout the story. The science is especially well handled with real, almost real and yet to come, all seamlessly melded together, leaving you to wonder which things are already developed and what is yet to come.

I enjoyed this book because I like Greg Bear's writing and story telling style and this is one of his better recent efforts. I recommend this book to Greg Bear fans and especially fans of the Queen of Angels universe because it is somewhat of a prequel to those books. Many of the themes in Queen of Angels begin to take shape in this book in no uncertain terms, even the characters and institutions from Queen of Angels and Slant are in this book if only in passing. Mariposa lays the ground work for the artificial intelligence, psychological manipulation of society, and futuristic criminal investigative techniques that appear in earlier Bear books with this theme (he has others, try Eon for hard sci-fi).

4 stars may be a little high, but I can't give it 3 stars because it is better than that. Quantico is the pre-cursor to this book so you may want to read that first to know a little more about the characters, but I found Quantico unsatisfying from a sci-fi perspective. Quantico was a near-term future crime story, Mariposa felt more futuristic than that but not at all like the future of Queen of Angels with full A.I. and some space exploration. Mariposa is a solid addition to the Greg Bear collection.

Mariposa (2009) is the second SF novel in the Quantico series, following Quantico. In the previous volume, FBI agents followed the intelligence into Saudi Arabia, searching for the biologicial weapons. They moved through the Haj while looking for the carrier trucks. Amidst death and destrution they found the vehicles and OWLs dropped from the sky.

In this novel, Alicia Kunsler is Deputy Director of the Bureau East. She maintains her office in the almost deserted Quantico.

Rebecca Rose was a Special Agent in the Bureau. She is now on an indefinite furlough as she recovers from PTSD -- posttraumatic Stress Disorder -- from the Mecca mission.

William Griffin is a Special Agent of the Bureau. He was also on the Mecca mission.

Fouad Al-Husam is a Special Agent of the Bureau. He is descended from Egypian heritage and was also on the Mecca mission.

Jane Rowland works for Spider/Argus, a recently created agency that monitors the flow of data. She was on the Mecca mission.

Edward Benjamin Quinn is Vice resident of the USA. He had served as an officer in Iraq before entering politics.

Nathaniel Trace is a computer geek. He is one of the Turing Seven programmers working for Mind Design. He had developed PTSD in combat within Arabia Deserta.

Chan Herbert is director of Mind Design and boss of the Turing Seven. Known as the Quiet Man, he led the effort to develop the Jones series of competers, a new and better type of data processubg machine.

Terence Plover is a researcher who realized that seroprixoline -- an antiicancer drug -- might also benefit persons suffering from PTSD. Price underwrote studies with the drug.

Axel Price is the CEO of Talos -- a personnel training company -- and other related ventures.

In this story, Quinn killed his wife and then went upstairs to read to his daughter. The Secret Service soon arrived to take him away. Now the homocide is national news.

Trace in staying at the ziggurat in Dubai where he is programming some of the Jones 2.0 at the heart of MSARC -- Mutual Sreategic Asseet Recovery and Control -- system for the International Financial Protection Corporation. He is experiencing something strange, including lessing of affect and vivid perceptions.

Trace takes a sedative and lies down, but the effects continue. Then he gets a phone call from the Quiet Man, who asks him where he is and whether Talos knows his location. Trace tells the the Quiet Man about his weird feelings and Chan suggests that they are the results of the Mariposa treatments. Then he orders Trace to leave Dubai immediately.

Trace arrives in Californa using the name Robert Sangstrom. The Quiet Man suggests that he meet with Plover at the COPES security conference in the LA conference center. So Trace calls Plover.

Kunsler sends Griffin to check on Plover. When he arrives at the house, it and eleven others are only blackened shells. The fire had killed Plover's wife, but his body was not found within the house.

Rowland arranges for a brief but powerful ripple of net inactivity -- a thirty-second denial of service -- for the Talos Corporation. A federal agent -- code name Nabokov -- will be breaking into the Talos infranet at that time. The action had been coordinated by Kunsler at Bureau East.

Fouad is Narbokov. As a linguistice instructor at Tolos, he arranges to be on the infranet at the time of the loss of service. He enters a maintenance ID to take control of the network. He downloads tetrabytes of data into prochines within his blood.

When he backs out of the session, Fouad walks into a situation in the halls of the tower. Security is trying to take down a programmer -- Nick Elder of the Turing Seven -- and failing. Nick is using hysteric strenth, super reactions and enhanced awareness to defeat the guards. Fouad decides to stand aside and let security handle the situation.

Rebecca is scheduled to make a presentation at COPES. Trace passes his information on to her. Then a bomb explodes in the conference center and Trace helps to locate Rebecca.

When Rebecca is released from the hospital, she has an interview with the President. She is assigned the investigation of Quinn. She and her aides delve deeply into the public files, but Rebecca gets the most crucial information through the files from Trace and from Plover himself.

This tale digs into the effect of Mariposa in the treatment of PTSD. Although it relieves the immediate symptoms, it eventually produces the side effects experienced by Quinn, Rebecca, the Turing Seven and others within this story.

The backgound of this story has the USA in a world of hurt. There are many issues that could be addessed in a sequel. Read and enjoy!

Highly recommended for Bear fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of political disasters, economic depression, and law enforcement.

-Arthur W. Jordin

I have just finished reading Mariposa. I found the story line unpredictable but clunky. Are editors still pushing authors to assign the president and most senior level management characters to women? As always, it feels like some hackey social statement or weird marketing appeasement. ..or are readers supposed to marvel that some day in some crazy future "a woman" could be in charge of something or president? I found it an annoying distraction. Otherwise the plot seemed hurried, as though Bear had a deadline so brought in a TV writer to wrap it up. The powers were interesting but untested drugs given to senior government people and the military? Really? The main character attacks the US government but never considered the results? How far was his compound from Waco? I never mind subtle gaps in sophisticated physics in a fiction book but like so many movies these days, to fully enjoy this book the reader needs to forgive a lot or be pretty dim.

Greg Bear provides an interesting if somewhat depressing view into the near future with this sequel to Quantico. It is certainly worth reading for anyone interested in international financial politics - particularly if you live in the United States. There are lots of clever technological smarts sprinkled throughout the book, but with frustratingly little expansion beyond a brief statement. The intriguing plot is slowly developed with growing suspense - you never know how the story will pan out. Personally, I found it very hard to have my level of interest sustained through the middle of the book after a good beginning, but my patience was rewarded by the last few exciting chapters.

I didn't really expect to like this - from the reviews it seemed a little too pro-spook and right-wing for my tastes. I took a chance because I've enjoyed other Bear books over the years, especially "Darwins Radio". Fortunately Bear's politics turn out to be pretty centrist and don't interfere with a great read. And the political intrigue was laced with the kind of first rate sci-fi that I love. I zipped though this book in 2 days, finding myself stealing time from other activities to keep reading it. It's a page-turner.

Bear's imaginary Mercenary company Talos seems to be a thinly disguised version of real-life Blackwater Security. Mariposa's villian, Talos CEO Axel Price is portrayed as a murderous thug months before real life Blackwater CEO Eric Prince was implicated in political murders: [...]. And (I'll try to avoid spoilers here) other actions Price takes in the book are very close to the latest rumors about Prince. Bear is either a very lucky guesser, or very, very sharp.

The technologies Bear creates here are also fascinating. The idea of a PTSD treatment slowly having unexpected side effects was presented in a very believable and entertaining way. Some of the message passing technologies, while not exactly new, were very clever. To say any more would be a spoiler - just watch out for snakes.

Unlike a lot of sci-fi the characters were believable. I found myself upset when good guys died, and happy when they got rewarded. The end of the book was very satisfying. It left me feeling like I'd glimpsed the near future of America, and there was hope.

My only complaint with this book is that it was over too soon. I guess I'll have to go back and read it's predecessor, Quantico.

We often read action novels for the pleasures of being caught up in their momentums, and then returning refreshed, and with a sense of justice fulfilled, where it might not always be as clearly so out in our regular world.

To have a writer with the imagination and insight of Greg Bear make the story means you get a lot to consider about as well, with unusual and thoughtful surprises at many points along the way.

Actually, I think it's those surprises, which appear all around the central plot, that make this book.

In writing about a possible near future from the turmoil of the present, you can feel a powerful artist's instinct drawing in what it knows must be there, the doors and windows through which our better humanity will find its ways to escape, and build something better.

In fact, we grow to understand, experience with, and then wish very well for some quite unexpectedly transitional persons; as well as appreciate to encounter shadowy personalities that it never will be quite possible to fully meet; and meanwhile along the way, find somehow incredibly sympathetic a backgrounded, partially aware computer intelligence which is different from any before -- though of course Greg has already been justly famous for giving us a taste of our yearnings through these beings we might make, who may have sometimes wider yet differently attuned vision from our own, and help us see our world whole.

An adventure, then, but with thoughtfulness also. There's violence as one might expect, and some one might not, so be ready for that, and the pace of the opening chapters.

In some fellow-feeling with one of it's central character's paths, this book may be a kind of desert passage we probably won't have to take, but will do better from having known about.

In a very dystopian near-future, America is falling apart (close to bankrupt due to foreign debt, services closing down, etc.) and ripe for a take-over, particularly by the Talos Corporation, which has been gaining power and wealth by supplying all kinds of government services ala Blackwater. Three FBI agents, working pretty much without official sanction, since the FBI has lost independence and power, are looking into the activities of Talos CEO Axel Price, hoping to discover his plans before it's too late.

Fouad is working undercover in Texas, at Talos's headquarters, William Griffin is checking into a series of murders and acts of terrorism, thought to be related to Talos. And Rebecca Rose is drawn back from an extended sabbatical with the bombing of a conference she attends and then by the President of the U.S., who personally requests she look into a murder perpetrated by the Vice President. Clues lead to Mariposa--a secret project supposedly for developing a new way to treat post-traumatic stress. It seems that the test subjects have experienced strange side effects and now they are being killed off one-by-one, and Rebecca herself was a former patient...

This is an effective tale of suspense and action, but I felt that the characters were not quite developed enough for me to feel the danger of the situation. Perhaps reading the earlier book that also features some of them might have helped, but a book needs to stand at least a bit on its own. There were a lot of interesting ideas going on, but these too didn't seem to be as developed as thoroughly as they could be in order to involve the reader. And the climax seemed a little too easily achieved.

Lots of stuff happens off-stage. Liked the story a lot, but more detail and action could have greatly benefited the reader.