Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, June 11, 2007
This was an impulse choice for me at the local B&N. Sean Williams other works with Sean Dix haven't ever done very much for me. But this one, it was interesting.
Its a murder mystery - one trying to solve a murder approximately 200 millennia old though. This is an interstellar setting, but one where light speed is the absoloute limit and mankind has reached throughout the galaxy and diversified in many, many ways. In some ways its like Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series, but not quite. One major difference is the way humans characterize themselves - singelton (single ID, capable of gestalt), Prime (old style human) and fort. The dominant form of mankind are the forts, gestalt humans that have slowed their time sense to a galactic scale (yet are still able to interact with and beat normal or accelerated humans (I know I had a hard time with it too)).
In Saturn Returns, Imre Bergamasc gets his old unit the Corps back together after being reconstructed from a partially destroyed recording beyond the galaxy's rim to determine who killed him. Along the way we get a decent look at the Mandala supersystem.
It's interesting, it deals with identity, what it is and what makes a person - memory, experience, time sense, etc. For that its interesting and worth checking out the expected sequel (the ending opens it up with Earth as a destination). But, I think Williams needs to work a little more on explaining his setting somewhere and perhaps firming up his neuroscience.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Australian SF Reader, July 31, 2007
The old wake up in the future, sex changed, memory lost, surrounded by bizarre intelligences story.
Oh, wait, that's a new one on me. It also doesn't get any less crazypants or frantic from there.
Now admittedly a couple of things in this were distracting. The name of the main character, Imre, now a woman, and the word Saturn. This means in my brain, or close enough too, Saturn Girl, Legion of Superheroes. Imre is a posthuman, yes, hanging out with Lightning Lad and from Titan, no.
Also the Luminous thing, having just looked at that book by Greg Egan for another reason today, and having a few posthuman similarities that was a bit distracting.
Basically, Williams has delivered the goods again. Packed into what is these days a short book (although part of a trilogy it appears) is a whole heap of good New Space Opera. Not as bleak as Reynolds, there are still plenty of surprises, different forms of humans, both normal and post, spaceships, Warhammeresque religions, huge distances and shooting at people. Take Reynolds, blend with a bit of Stross, maybe add a pinch of Simon R. Green's Deathstalker and you might get a bit of an idea of the flavour of this novel.
Towards the end you start to get a look at what the various characters from Imre's earlier life really were up to, and the same for his particular incarnation. Being posthumans, this could mean what several different varieties of their selves had been up to, in various times and parts of space.
Now all he has to do is keep it up for the next book, something I will definitely be looking forward too, despite not being a Gary Numan fan.
Given the stuff packed into this book, most of us will find his appendix and its information quite useful, I think.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
High Concept Space Opera, May 17, 2009
I've found "Saturn Returns" by pure chance during a business trip at a bookstore and must say I am glad I found it! Even with a very hard, 13- to 14-hour work schedule, I read it in just one week. A real page turner for sure.
The book is crammed with interesting, "high-concept" ideas, and is written in fluid, easy to read and very pleasant prose. Although its galactic scope and mind-blowing time scale put it firmly in the realm of space opera, the book is "realistic" enough in its science to please hard sci-fi fans (I count myself as one).
The treatment given to the concept of individual identity is very provoking and by far the highest point of the book. Most impressive, mr. Williams is able to provide enough information to the reader about it and how it influences society at large with a extremely low volume of infodumps. The realities of galactic society, both past and present, are presented through the story in a fluid, natural way, without falling in the lecture mode so often used.
Overall, I enjoyed this book immensely and will buy the reminder books in the trilogy for sure.
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