Customer Reviews

Murphy's Gambit

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Given the author's background, I was surprised at how loose some aspects of science are played with in this book. That and the 9 as a prime number. But these elements stand out because the book has a general hard science fiction feeling to it.

But as far as the *story* goes, it is pretty good. Thia Murphy, six weeks from graduating from academy at the top of her class, is set up by an unscrupulous corporation whose job offer she snobbed, expelled, and then left no choice but to take up that offer or being forced into indentured service and bought by them all the same.

On the run, without money or options, she is offered a job by a rival corporation: to steal the very ship the first corporation wanted her to pilot. A path that will turn her into a criminal, a fugitive with a huge price on her head, a path that will endanger those close to her and will turn her into the very thing she entered the academy to escape: a floater rebel, daughter of her father.

One foot on each culture, grounder and floter, accepted by neither, she tries to find herself, to discover who she is as she desperately fights to stay alive and free.

In a distant future, there exists a new class of beings. The floaters are humans born and raised in near zero conditions. Most of the other members of society look down at the floaters who serve as indentured servants of large corporations ruling space. The floaters perform the most menial jobs that lead to a shortened life span and are rejected by the rest of society. The floaters loathe feeling like slaves and have tried to overturn the current government.

Floater Thiadora Murphy, whose rebellious father vanished, is being trained to work in normal human conditions. She is six weeks from graduating from the military academy when someone sabotages her career and she is unfairly expelled. This pressures Thiadora to accept work with a corporation flying a mysterious spacecraft that travels faster than the speed of light. Many people and other corporations want to obtain the ship and Murphy, but she outwits everyone including her employers enabling the Floaters to take the first baby step towards freedom.

This debut novel is an enjoyable high tech space opera that keeps sub-genre fans entertained for hours. The charcaters on both sides of the conflict ring true and their actions seem credible given the situations that occur. MURPHY'S GAMBIT is a well designed tale that belies the fact that this is Syne Mitchell's first book as readers will line up for book two.

Harriet Klausner

The best things about this book are the main character and the spacer culture. I wanted Thiadora Murphy to come through. I found her self exploration and development believable and engrossing. The best part of the book is the end, which I will not spoil. Suffice it to say that my parting thought was: "Hey! This woman really doesn't think like me!". The author's ability to convey such a difference in psychology is a testament to her skill: because the book is ultimately about a culture of people adapted to zero gee.
I enjoyed learning about that spacebound culture immensely. Ms. Mitchell approaches the topics of human space habitation from a refreshing perspective. Very few people speak believably about the poor and destitute in science ficiton. It is sometimes assumed that there simply won't be any. CJ Cherryh and J. Michael Straczynski are the only other sci-fi writers that I can think of to present this side of the future. Ms. Mitchell doesn't flinch to give us stale, musty, sweaty spacecraft crewed by tightly night communities of highly adapted people.
Persons who dislike the author's science should note the boldface above. The technology is used to establish a setting for the culture and character. I've been interviewing people and reading technical journals on fission and fusion drive research for six years and I work in the nuclear fission field. Ms. Mitchell has integrated a number of different real world propulsion concepts to make her setting believable while simultaneously keeping her story firmly grounded in character. She also throws in a good old fashioned inertialess drive for flavor which is fun to play with. While I might disagree with several of the author's assumptions about how the spaceflight that our present physics can predict will work(detection ranges and magnitudes of accelerations, mostly) the key point is that her world is internally consistent and a whole lot of fun! She even has an original twist on the faster than light drive that never bogging the reader down in annoying details as to how it works.
I did have one issue with the story. The end seemed to come and go pretty quickly. This meant that a few characters went through some major trauma in very short spans of time and I felt a bit rushed. This doesn't kill the story for me, but a bit more exposition on a few secondary characters would have made me buy their changes more. Overall, I recommend it.

"If you purchased this book without the cover", so the legend inside every one of these begins, it's probably because the cover is the best part.

I regret that I found the writing stilted, repetitive and cloyingly cliche for the most part.

I didn't particularly care for our dauntless heroine, Thiadora Murphy, or any of the other overdone and under-realized characters in this tale. They all change attitudes and even personalities at the drop of an opportunity. And how many times did our Murphy bemoan her condition as a victim, unable to continue in her battle against the forces of evil, only to once again come to the fore and triumph.

The wondrous ship and space suit combination warp all concepts of physics beyond any possible rationalization other than the author's need for a thrilling and unlikely plot.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't much like it either. No recommendation here.

In Syne Mitchell's future, corporations rule. Profit is the bottom line, and people are cheap. Especially floaters: once you adapt to zero G there's no going back, and everything you need, right down to the air you breathe, comes through the corporations. And you thought you had it bad! Murphy's Gambit is a great adventure story set in a plausible universe - one that (for a change) takes advantage of the possibilities and limits of space, as well as those of human nature. Try it, you'll like it!

Murphy's Gambit is one of the best books to come out in recent years. Other people have done a fine job of saying what this book is about, so let me take up my 1,000 words by telling you what's GOOD about this book.

I really enjoy Mitchell's concept of a "floater" society. These are the working class people of the future... something that much of science fiction is loathe to deal with. I found it fascinating that in Mitchell's vision, being working class became more than just a matter of desperation... after a while, when space began to physically change the floaters, what they did and who they were developed into its own culture. Thus, Murphy, who attempted to leave behind the unattractive parts of being a floater (poverty, etc.), had to struggle with a certain amount of working class pride, culture. There's a bit of that alive today, and I'd love to see more about this explored in future books by Mitchell.

Despite what a lot of other reviewers have said--for me, what's important about the science in Murphy's Gambit is that Mitchell makes me feel that space is big, I mean, really big. I like gee-whiz space travel, and Mitchell makes the deep reaches of outer space feel awesome to me again. Details, schmetails. As a science fiction writer myself, I have to applaud Mitchell's efforts. One of the reasons I've never tried to write about space travel is because there are so many things readers can nit-pick and criticize. Honestly, for me, if the prose is smooth and the story gripping, the hard-core mechanics don't mean diddly.

Murphy's Gambit is a compelling story. In fact, I loved it so much I've already pre-ordered Mitchell's next book. Everyone should do the same.

This book was intriguing enough to make me buy another from the author. I have read probably 500 science fiction books and I think this one had some worthwhile ideas.

I loved the idea of floater culture and grounders described in a believeable way. I always wondered how that would work out in real life. I love the fact that she doesn't end up with the man at the end. I love the plastic reshaping prison cells. I'm not quite sure I buy the whole 13th seat in the collective, but I was hoping for some illumination in a sequel.

Don't believe all you read from other commentors. This book was not formulaic, I couldn't put it down.

Murphy's Gambit falls in the category of "brain candy" for me. Very enjoyable read, particularly once the story caught its stride. This fits well in the genre of the Miles Vorkosigan/Honor Harrington-type space opera, complete with the (initially) naive underdog but potent protagonist and lots of chewy space-tech. Reading other reviews I see complaints about the science. Any science inconsistencies are easily set aside, and are nowhere near as jarring as, say, your average Star Trek episode or the vast majority of science fiction I've ever read. I found the vast majority of the science to enhance my experience of the story. Does this qualify as a physics textbook? Why should it? It's fiction, a novel, and meant for entertainment. And as entertainment, it's certainly better value for the buck than the vast majority of other entertainments out there. I had fun--if you like Bujold and Weber, you'll probably enjoy this.

For all the no brain reviews that I have read just now there should be at least one that expresses the real intent of Murphy's Gambit, which was to present an abstract of the future and not to be misled by just a few mistakes. It was an excellent prelude to the real possibilities dealing with Astro-Physics which the author is very capable of handling and did so with expertise. The space ship presented a very real example of what is possible in Einstein's universe if the people who write reviews could just imagine, but they are too concerned with a glob of paint on a canvas when they should just back away and look at an excellent work of art.

This book was something of a disappointment. The author had a great idea -- an entirely disenfranchised culture of people who live in space -- but the author did little with it. Granted, this was the author's first foray into writing a full-length science fiction novel, so someone's first try at something shouldn't be shot down completely. Nonetheless, the author could have done so much MORE with this concept. To start, she could have, and indeed should have, fleshed out this novel much more...being a bit more descriptive about the characters' environs as well as the characters' themselves would have gone a long way. Also, the author's consistency could use some work...in the first third of the book the main character gets her ankle hurt and while we do occassionally hear about the pain she's in...there are several times farther along in the story where she could have gotten at least some kind of cursory medical attention...but doesn't...like the author forgot about that thread of the story. But oddly enough it was a couple of small details about this book that bothered me the most. First, the main characater's home system encircles the star Formalhaut...there is NO star Formalhaut...the star's name is FOMALHAUT -- no "R". And the second little thing that bugged me was a reference toward the end of the book about "intergalactic" trade or travel (I don't remember which). The word "intergalactic" means between galaxies, there is no travel between galaxies in the book, just travel within this one...what the author should have said was "interstellar"...which means between stars, which does happen in the book. I know the above points are minor...I can forgive a weakly written story...but when someone screws up little details it really irks me. Overall, despite the fact that this is the author's first attempt at a scifi novel, this book could have been so much better (and if the author ever decides to rewrite things from a different angle later on in her career I would certainly read that story). This book is really best read in the early teen years and should be relegated to the Young Adult section of either your library or bookstore. For ages 9-14 this book is definitely recommended (but not before a book like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game)...for anyone beyond their early to mid-teens, this book is only worth recommending if you've got nothing else to read, want to get a taste of what your kids are reading, or are a really die-hard scifi fan.