Customer Reviews

Recursion

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

 

 

Against the backdrop of today's world, in which governments become ever more intrusive into our daily lives and computer-based observation of our actions runs rampant, Ballantyne's vision of the future definitely hits home. Yet "Recursion" is hardly a ham-handed allegory; it has relevance to today's issues yet tells its own story. Nor do its characters face easy choices; it's often hard to tell what the "right" path to take is, and Eva, Constantine and Herb, much like real people, often have to cross their fingers and pray they've made the right choices.

The plot is intricate and delicately woven across three time periods. Setting a story in multiple time periods is extremely tricky, and risks causing those stories set in older times to feel irrelevant or unnecessary. Neither is the case here; Ballantyne does an extraordinary job of making each story important, revelatory, and fascinating, as well as necessary to understanding the other characters and events in the book.

The writing is lean and precise; most of the characters (particularly Eva, Constantine, and the Watcher) are fascinating and their stories amazing. I loved unraveling the events of this book. It walked a good line between explaining enough that the reader could keep up, yet not so much that it felt dumbed-down.

My only problem with this book is the third story. The story itself is quite interesting, but the characters of Herb and Robert (Herb's government-provided companion) are both a bit flat, particularly early on. Herb is one of the least-developed of the book's major characters, which is a bit odd since he's billed as its main character. Constantine and Eva were interesting enough to largely make up for that, but it is an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise amazing book. Still, as I said, it's Ballantyne's first novel, and that this is the only real flaw in it is quite impressive. I can see why he did it this way---Herb does change and grow over the course of the book, after all---but he still needed to start off with more of a hook to make him compelling. At first I found myself looking forward to getting back to Eva and Constantine's stories as I read Herb's.

This is a fascinating book that mixes technological science fiction with interesting philosophical questions and quite a few unusual characters, and I definitely believe it's worth a read if that's what you're looking for.

The writing was so cheesy I grimaced again and again. Herb had about the intelligence of a cow, which conveniently allowed Johnston to explain the world to the reader in a manner that reminded me of the famous column "If all stories were written like science fiction stories." The ending was unconvincing and bizarre.

Probably the lamest part of the book is the implausible von Neumann machines which are the basis of essentially the entire plot. Apparently these little guys can build duplicates of themselves out of -anything-, including:

* Water
* The recently-molten iron core of a rocky planet
* Duplicates of themselves

Not only that, but after converting every gram of mass on a planet while avoiding melting, they can overcome the gravitational binding energy of the entire planet and form themselves into a long spear for attacking enemies. Note that wikipedia says that for an Earth-sized planet that's 37.5 megajoules per kilogram of mass. Pretty good for a bunch of little model robots with spider legs.

And of course (why not?) even spaceships can reproduce by mitosis. Somehow the carpet reproduces into two carpets half as thin. The whole ship can split this way and reassemble itself completely in minutes. When Herb opens a container of coffee in one of the split ships, it's half full. I laughed out loud.

I picked up this paperback knowing nothing about the book (or author for that matter). The synopsis looked interesting.

I wasn't expecting too much, but was happily surprised to find the book very engaging and well thought-out. It was an excellent read that delves into AI (in a sci-fi kind of way) and implications of self-replicating machinery. I've recommended it to several friends and they've enjoyed it as well.

I'm looking forward to more sci-fi from Mr. Ballantyne.

The freshman novel of Tony Ballantyne is a cheesy mixture of bland dialogue, unrefined plot points and boring characters. Where do I begin? Let's start with his writing style before we tear the book apart. First, the book needs a serious editor because there were so many points of annoyance I nearly threw the book at the wall. How many times can the cast SHIVER in 406 pages? Oh, more than 15 times, along with shivering water once. Word repetition doesn't stop there. For some reason, the author finds is necessary to repeat Herb's name (one of the three main characters) over and over again instead of using the 2nd person pronoun `he.' It seems as if every paragraph has Herb's name at least four times. Herb is a terribly lame character anyway; he's so lame he shouldn't even have been GIVEN a name! On page 6 I laughed out loud at the cheesiness on the page: "Herb was different. He had known it since he was a child." In another paragraph, Herb narrates how rich his father is, and mentions so three times in only a few lines... then says it again with the first sentence of the very next paragraph. Herb's social status played no part in the plot, so why even mention it? Either sometime is wrong with the character or just the author himself?

Secondly, I should have known the book was going to be a failure when I read the words at the top of the back cover: "In a world of manipulated reality, what does it truly mean to be human?" The plot of "what does it mean to be human" has been run into the ground so many different ways and hardly any of them live up to the task of tackling that question! Bingo! Recursion fails miserably at the attempt to answer this ultimate question.

Eva is the third character in the limelight cast and whose introductory chapter is actually quite enticing. It's a fun mixture of daily life, paranoia and secret service. It would have made a nice short story, or on an even grander scheme, a good novel in itself. Somehow it interweaves itself with the other two storylines. It's seems a rather hasty mix, at that. Though the rest of her independent storyline is worthy of the readers attention.

Constantine is the third and last main character in Recursion. His independent storyline starts off oddly and maintains the idiosyncratic oddity throughout the entire book. The answer to why Constantine has four personalities in his heads is never answered and leaves a huge, unfulfilled gapping void- who are Red, Blue, White and Grey?

The last 15% manages to pull enough inertia together to make itself pull its three storylines together to form a semi-logic pre-conclusion. However, none of it seems satisfactory. Then comes the ending, which is a desperate grasp for a familiar conclusion. The banality, lack of forethought and the author's Attention Deficit Disorder to plot details would lead me to steer clear of his novels. He (and his editors) ought to first read the classics, pay attention to THOSE details and then find the finesse to incorporate that into his novels.

Ballantyne took some basic ideas that have been explored before, and twisted them together in an interesting way. Unfortunately, he let the interlinked threads of the story control the presentation, and didn't invest enough in the characters or in freshening the basic ideas. While this was promising, it's not enough to make me pick up his next book.

This book is wonderfully imagined. It has some of the best developed AI writing I've ever seen.

If you're a Neal Asher fan you'll really appreciate this book.

I just finished it and ordered the next 2 books in the series.

It's been a couple of years since I read this book. With the perspective that time can bring, I can say that this is one of the best science fiction books I've ever read. It's one of those books that I enjoyed so much that it's stuck in my mind, as certain rare books do. Years and decades later, you still remember them with fondness and you'll pick them up and reread them every so often. "Recursion" is very well written, very fast-paced and thought-provoking, as are the follow-up books in the series. Tony Ballantyne has become one of those rare authors whose books I will pick up and devour based on his name alone.

The writing is spectacular, pacing pretty nice. Read this book in three days, couldn't put it down. It is a sorta hybrid between the classic sci-fi of Assimov and the more modern concepts in this day and age of A.I.

The story seemed fresh and new and I loved the fact that it is obvious the author did some research and put some thought behind his sci-fi, so the worldbuilding has the 'feel' of being real which is very important to me. Overall, I highly recommend this book.

I don't think this book was horrible. I liked the technology a lot, and I especially liked the suspense of not knowing who the good guys really are. Who is telling the truth? Good suspense and interesting technology, mixed with a variety of characters told through a story in three different time frames. Result: some interesting characters, fun adventure, and some really uninteresting characters. What I found least enjoyable about this novel was the cheesy dialog. I realize Science Fiction is notoriously weak in the area of characters and dialog, but this was pretty bad for the most part. I hope Tony made enough money on this one to hire an editor for the next book in this series, there are some seriously bad mistakes about 75% into the book spanning roughly two chapters that could have been fixed with a quick read. Not a must read, but not a bad read either.

I picked up this book when I found out the author had been nominated for the Phillip K Dick award. Within a few pages I knew I was going to like it. The plot is clever without being needlessly convoluted. The writing is clear and clean, and not bogged down with endless description. Unpredicable and satisfying. Highly reccomended.