Customer Reviews

The Mirrored Heavens

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This review will be written. In the same style. As the author writes in this book. Ridiculously short sentences. Fragments. Bland characterizations without depth.

Do not buy. This book is awful. If you want fast-paced writing with interesting characters. Look up Jeff Somers or John Scalzi.

Enjoy.

I just didn't like this book. I bought for two reasons, one to round out a 4-for-3 promo and two based on my love of cyberpunk literature. This is not good cyberpunk in my opinion. The writing style sees choppy and hurried. The cover compares it to Gibson's "Neuromancer" it does NOT compare. Gibson has a beautiful writing style and can spend a page describing on small electronic box. Most cyberpunk authors try and invent something new when they start a book, not David J. Williams. I only read about halfway through but, nothing except a few new terms like "razor" for the hackers and "mechanic" for wet-work personnel is new. The battle scenes are brutal but not very descriptive.

Just because a character runs the internet with their mind, and there's a cyborg involved, does not make the work cyberpunk. As someone who's read not only Neuromancer, but Hardwired, and the Enigma Variations as well as the precusors Shock Wave Rider and Cold Cash War as well as dozens of other works in the Genre I think I can define it. Cyberpunk has cyborgs, mind hackers, and even a dystopian future like this book. It also, however, has A PLOT it has CHARACTERS AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

This book is one long retaliation piece to an initial event. The empty, flat, no back story, automaton characters vomit dull simple dialog. The description, even the description of action, is repetitive poorly explained and lifeless.

Cyberpunk has anti-heroes who reach out to do better and are transformed by the end of the book, usually the seeds of their transformation can be found in their back story which is revealed through exposition or inner dialog: the dull simplistic paper cut outs of this work have no back story and very little inner dialog. And no the plot device that they can't trust their memory doesn't count. The author only uses it to get around poorly drawn characters he does not make it truly intergral to the story. Character motivation is simple survival with little or no thought. They do not ask why, nor look around and understand; they act, they react, and they reload. Even at its most intense the dialog about the society the work is based on reads more like a cheap cold war novel from the 60's than a cyberpunk piece.

This book is like the Executioner series or any of a dozen sci-fi miliporn works. If you like the empty bundles of thoughtless macho typing that David Drake writes then you will like this. Even Dietz' cyborg marines series is closer to cyberpunk than this work and only a fool would call that series Cyberpunk. Instead of revealing the culture's dystopia via dialog the author uses the lazy back of the book index dodge. Even then the author does not seem to be up to the task of truly providing the decriptive globalism that is a hallmark of the writing style.

Finally, in Cyberpunk, the science has become so pervasive it is invasive within the body. That state is bases of the dystopia, the engine of the plot, and the conflict which brings about character redemption. In this work, the science is just a tool for the one dimensional zombies of the work to shoot each other and stand in. Really, you can almost argue that the work shouldn't even be considered science fiction.

If you liked the Cyberpunk of Asher, Morgan, Gibson, Jeter, Maddox Roberts, Jon Williams, and Stross and you want more cyberpunk then do not read this work. However, if you think that the last legion series, Orphan's series or the Clone Alliance series are great forms of Science Fiction writing then read it.

More a thrill ride than literature. Set in a dystopian future, the characters are mostly cyborgs fighting with one foot in the real world and one in a virtual one (and often unsure which is which). Lots of twists and turns and everybody seems to be quadruple traitor. Williams writing style is painful at times. Everyone likes to talk in Non sequitir taglines. Read the first few pages before you buy. If you can live with the style there's a fast moving story hiding in there. I swing more toward military fiction and more conventional alt history so all the intrigue and confusion mostly annoyed me, but if you like spy novels and thought the Matrix was profound this might work for you.

Little to no plot. No character development. Little to no world building exposition. It's basically one severely over-extended action piece with no back story or realistic motivation present, strung together with positively Shatnerian dialogue. If you want cyberpunk, read a real book. Gibson and Stephenson would be good authors to choose.

The bottom line is that this is a page turner. Intriguing plot where you are not quite sure that things are as they seem to be (and they are not). Very satisfying ending which is particularly appreciated when compared to the first volume of other multi-volume series. The sardonic-laconic dialog though seems to be borrowed from a "Die Hard" or "Terminator" action movie and perhaps that is what was intended but it is so stilted that it often pulled me right of out of my immersion in the story.

I attempted to read this book a while back based on a recommendation in the transhumanist Humanity+ Magazine. First, I have to say that while I appreciate the quality that many here go on about, this book is not for everyone. Yes, it is fast-paced and action-packed but as with all things, too much of something can get grating and irritating.

The writing style itself leaves something to be desired. I assumed that the beginning of the book was attempting to get me involved into the story. I assumed it would slow down eventually. That never happened and eventually I stopped trying. I wanted to enjoy the book, but the style grows increasingly repetitive and loses its charm after so many pages of reading endless sentence fragments.

Books are supposed to tell a story, but unfortunately, the author seemed to want to tell a really long action scene. I know the old cliche "show, don't tell" but this guy takes to another level. Many scenes are just fragmented descriptions that show what he's talking about but doesn't exactly tell us anything to fill in the blanks. It's absolutely horrendous for establishing the story in between the action.

I want to read about human beings being challenged, not crazy tricked out badasses that can go non-stop without ever taking a break. Stories are supposed to have that down time where you can reflect. This book doesn't allow for that EVER.

The concept and the story world are absolutely wonderful. If you can handle action. Endless, like this. While you read. There's something. Something to be said about your tolerance. The way you can handle a different approach. Totally different from the rest. For hundreds. Hundreds of pages.

I just couldn't. :)