The Mirrored Heavens [Hardcover]

David J. Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2008

In the 22nd century, the first wonder of a brave new world is the Phoenix Space Elevator, designed to give mankind greater access to the frontier beyond Earth. Cooperatively built by the United States and the Eurasian Coalition, the Elevator is also a grand symbol of superpower alliance following a second cold war. And it's just been destroyed. With suspicions rampant, armies and espionage teams are mobilized across the globe and beyond. Enter Claire Haskell and Jason Marlowe, U.S. counterintelligence agents and former lovers-though their memories may only be constructs implanted by their spymaster. Now their agenda is to trust no one. For as the crisis mounts, the lives of all involved will converge in one explosive finale-and a startling aftermath that will rewrite everything they've ever known-about their mission, their world, and themselves.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 409 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Spectra Book (2008)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001R3BWA6
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,678,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David J. Williams is a science fiction writer who currently lives in Washington D.C. Previously he worked on the HOMEWORLD series of video games.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Harder, denser, faster cyberpunk with more guns, politics, and head-churning twists, May 24, 2008

By 

Derek Zumsteg "DMZ" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mirrored Heavens (Paperback)

I picked up Mirrored Heavens and almost fifty pages later I realized I'd lost an hour and was staring at my book with my jaw a little open. I felt like someone had stomped an accelerator pedal connected to a part of my brain that hadn't fired up in years. It's almost dizzying.

It's amazingly fast-paced, engrossing, too plausible, scary, thrilling, and a little bit joyous as it runs as fast as it can.

This book is for you if:
- You long for a good cyberpunk tone, like Burning Chrome, or Glass Hammer, if you know what I'm talking about
- You like a good techno thriller
- You want to read a distinctive new scifi voice
- You like the tangled political landscapes of a La Carre novel

It may not be for you if:
- You prefer the tone and pace of a Foundation novel over Neuromancer - you're not going to get clear, broken-out exposition, for instance
- You need chapter breaks
- You don't like present tense

I wanted to be able to buy the next one immediately after finishing this book -- I liked it that much.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Almost Good., July 31, 2008

By 

TheAdlerian (Philly, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mirrored Heavens (Paperback)

I just finished the book and trust me, I don't think that this review needs a "Spoilers" warning for the reader, and I'll tell you why.

Before I do, I have to say that the story has a lot of action if you're in the mood for it and some interesting settings. However, I can't provide spoilers because I have no clear idea about what happened. Of course, I know WHAT happened but I'm not sure WHY it happened.

That's because the book is narrated as if the events were viewed by a person living in another dimension. As if they have no concept of the players, their philosophies, their technology, or their motivations. We just get scene after scene of interesting, yet fairly meaningless, activity. It's as if a cowboy from the 19th century decided to tell you his impression of the Mideast war as seen through a crystal ball.

It was vague to the extreme---but still interesting.

The author, if he plans on writing more, needs to bore us with the details. Without a little bit of world building the story borders on dull and hard to care about. I was having trouble figuring out who to like in the story, and one guy, I still don't know who he is.

I'd like to say that I have several grad degrees in a complex verbally oriented subject, so I know how to read and comprehend. The author made it tough to do that.

Although I'm saying negative things, seemingly, I'm actually asking the author to do a better job. He clearly has a good concept in mind, and I'd like him to tell us about it.

Cyberpunk:

Get rid of that.

You're writing something more like "cyberpro" and it needs to sound like it.

Cyberpunk frequently features uneducated outcast types who "know cyberspace" and so their narration is like that of a laconic teenager chewing gum, or something along those lines.

The text of this book was written like that with short sentences and the repeated use of "says" after the dialogue, much like a kid would say. However, the subject isn't about that, and has to do with super highly trained people, some of which may never have been exposed to pop culture.

The "punk" needs to be fixed.

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cyberpunk? Not even close! Just combat porn., October 16, 2008

By 

Taryntoo - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mirrored Heavens (Paperback)

Tedious. I gave up 100 pages into the fight scene that the book opened with. And the writing? Don't get me started! Check this out, supposedly the mental process of a master hacker, a network infiltrator:

"Haskell focuses on a series of lines that carry particularly heavy traffic Each line winds through buildings. Each terminates in what appears to be a dead end. But something's crouching at each of those ends. Something that seems to be winding up through incremental stages of activation. Even as she takes this in, she's noticing the same thing going down in other cities.... In each city, it's the same: communications back and forth. Things being queried. Things responding...but what does it mean? Is this a pattern she's just now seeing? Is something changing? Is this the key to it all? Was this happening already? She can't figure it out."

Uh... what that means is there's TCP traffic on the wires. Queries, replies, communication back and forth? Yep that would be network traffic for sure. Want to know what it means? Don't just sit there marveling over data flow, crack open a packet and inspect the content!

The good news, such as it is: It's not just the women who are depicted with barren mental landscapes. All the characters are cardboard cutouts, idiots just blasting away at everything that moves. The whole book is a first person shooter, but without even the satisfaction of pulling the trigger yourself.