Customer Reviews

Scardown

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hammered sucked you into Bear's future world of climate change, cyberware and strange technologies of dubious origin, Scardown ratchets up the tension a few more notches.

Giving little concession to those who did not read the first, Scardown gives us MORE. Alien technology influenced spacecraft. Space Warfare. Nanotechnology. Artificial Intelligences. And characters we care about.

Its no wonder that Bear won the John Campbell award for best new writer at the 2005 Hugo Awards. If you've not read Hammered, go read that, and you will want to read this. And if you did read Hammered, its likely you don't need me to sell you on reading this book, save for me to tell you that its not as good as Hammered.

It's BETTER.

"Scardown" goes off in a totally unexpected direction. The three-part saga that in the author's "Hammered" seemed to be establishing itself as a cyberpunky "band of outlaws up against globalism and the corporations" turns into something quite different, soaring off into international conflict, character conflict, space opera, and more than a hint of mysterious aliens.

As before, the tale is told in a series of jagged, short, time-stamped chapters from multiple povs. Jenny Casey, with her "wetware" upgraded, is now going to be plugged in as a starship pilot, while the scientists, teenagers, gangsters, et al. from the previous volume continue to play their roles. (Bear cleverly borrows the "mad space pilot" concept from Cordwainer Smith.) The characters' motivations are constantly in flux, and it's impossible to clearly tell who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Let's just say they're all mostly imperfect, but try to do what they think is best. Also, the author is, fortunately, interested as much in character as she is in plot and action. Indeed, there are times when you're likely to tear up at some of the hard choices that the characters have to make.

Bear's a clever writer, too--a great prose stylist, and her dialogue can often go off in unexpected directions. Sometimes a character will begin speaking, after which some other bit of business starts, and the other speaker doesn't respond for a paragraph or so. Disconcerting at first, but you'll get used to it.

Notes and asides: Second of three, so obviously you should read "Hammered" before tackling this one.

Former Canadian Special Forces operative Jenny Casey, in her 50's, is back in duty. A corrupted Unitek corporation is working with armed forces and made it possible for Canada to have a space fleet. The army requires Jenny to do the impossible. He must pilot starship Montreal, based on alien technology left by the mysterious Benefactors behind Mars, to scout new habitable worlds. Earth is suffering from ecological collapse within 100 years and can't sustain its population for long. Canada an China are the superpowers which are in a race to colonize nearby stars. This is cold war, not cooperation, but ruthless survival game.

The book starts up right where Hammered left off, so it is not best to read stand alone. In this dystopian future the old war dog, half mechanical woman, is not just anybody. The relationships are one night stands, she's having an addiction, and choices in this cyberpunkish world are tough; people die. The book expands from previous book from being on the street to the geopolitical cyberware where and AI becomes central to the story. The AI, Jenny's protege, communicates with all pilots with help of Hammer drug, but there it is soon needed for the Earth. This trampling free will AI is not exactly wise but its intentions are hoped to be on the right side.

Two (2) stars. Written in 2004 this is book 2 in a trilogy. The writer is very good at painting characters by bringing up their humanity and flaws in this post-War nanotech world. They are all figuring out how to cope with their lives. The moral choices are not right or wrong, but commenced out of necessity. The sketches of imagination continue to be followed in narratives but the reader must concentrate hard on varying points of view to gather pieces and fill in the roomful of events. The extremely short chapters titled with exotic time stamps barely leave enough meat to dive. The snaring narratives have a problem generating tensions with their use of slang. The Razorface gangster lord story line from the first book is a minuscule, barely staying under control, and feel out of proportions compared to the eco-war settings the nations are having. There is something that is bipartite here. The expected starship plot is practically a side step and the wheels rolls towards the turning points to be in history. The reader will either love the book or have hard time with it.

Good writing, this is another after the collapse of most of civilization stories. But it is well done and has a different slant than most. Good character development and so far, i have read 2 books, a solid story.
I would buy it again.

China-Canada territorial ambitions, in space.

The covers of these might suggest some gung-ho space marine type action. Not really anything like that at all, even with some military type characters. So if you don't like that sort of thing, please don't let that put you off.

What you have instead is an Earth in big trouble, some weird aliens, and an artificial intelligence or two. Wars and annihilation are on the agenda unless new places to live can be found. By 'new places' read planets. Spaceships are required, and this is where Jenny Casey comes in, helping out with training and flying such things.

It is not all flying around though, as plenty of political skullduggery and research, going on back on Earth.

Basically, it is good. I was pleasantly surprised by this trilogy.

As others have noted, you should start with Hammered, the first book in this series.
In the first book, Bear's writing was a little stiff, and her dialog was VERY weak in sections. She's clearly learned and improved. Where her first book took cues from early William Gibson, in this one, she clearly cues off his later work, as well as Neal Stephenson and others, moving the action onto a global/space opera stage.
For those who have read the first book, things are definitely going downhill, and they continue to do so in this book. Much of the action is dark, betrayal on betrayal in the background, while good folks (Master Chief Warrant Officer Casey and family/friends) fight to be able to do the right thing. On the other hand, we do get to know Col. Valens and his granddaughter Patty much better. We meet a new Chinese pilot, and we learn more about other characters.
A much-improved writer telling a dark story. If you liked the first book, or you like the other authors named, you will enjoy this one. Bear could still do with some editing (which seems to be more and more scarce in the publishing world), but she's definitely writing a solid story with a good mix of science, intrigue, and characterization. I had the third one waiting before I finished this one, so I'll be looking for more from this author.

SCARDOWN, Elizabeth Bear's follow-up to her well-received first novel HAMMERED, is not the sequel that novel led me to expect ... and that's probably a good thing. What I had anticipated was an excursion to the stars that left behind all of the earthly chaos that our cyborg protagonist Jenny Casey encountered in the first novel. Instead, starship *Montreal*, which was built jointly by giant corporation Unitek and the Canadian government, goes nowhere while the state of the earth gets progressively (and towards the end of the book, catastrophically) worse.

Nevertheless, SCARDOWN changes the scene and the case of secondary characters considerably from HAMMERED. Former drug lord Razorface is still around, but now he's in Canada seeking revenge on the people behind his wife's death. He hooks up with some kids dabbling in terrorism, one of whom has a connection to Jenny's past. Col. Fred Valens, the ambiguous character who was responsible both for a lot of bad things in HAMMERED and at the same time for helping drastically improve Jenny's well-being, is still around and in ruthless ends-justify-means mode. His motives become clearer as the story progresses, and we get to meet his softer side in the form of his (male) spouse and his granddaughter Patty. Patty stands out in a starship pilot program that somewhat improbably also includes Jenny's fictive niece Leah; both of the girls go on to play important roles. The awkward Jenny-Gabe-Elspeth triangle continues both in Toronto and in space, AI Richard continues to grow, becoming probably the second-most central character in the book, and Chinese pilot and poet Min-xue comes along to provide insight into the motives and actions of the PanChinese space program. And then there are the aliens who seem to be headed our way ...

Three phenomena that were barely noticeable in HAMMERED become central in SCARDOWN: Earth may be headed for an environmental disaster that will destroy most if not all earthly life; the competition between Canada and PanChina for dominance in space is intense, partly for that reason; and Canada is almost entirely dependent on corporate baddie Unitek for its space program. Most of the drama and action stem from these factors. The biggest question the book raises is how much we can or should rely on artificial intelligence and (alien) nanotechnology to solve the earth's and our own problems.

Overall, SCARDOWN is OK (my rating is closer to 3.5 stars than to the 3.0 stars Amazon allows me). Bear writes well, and Jenny Casey is a (mostly) sympathetic character/first-person narrator. Environmental disaster, competition between nations, the perils and promise of AI and nanotech, and the alienation and exhilaration of cyborgification (can I say that?) are all sci-fi themes that are still in style. Bear's consistent foregrounding of cooperation across ethnic and racial differences -- Jenny is native American, Gabe is French Canadian, Razorface is African American, etc. -- is also, if nothing else, warm and fuzzy.

On the other hand, some of the plotlines -- like those involving Razorface and his cohorts -- are distractions, Bear somehow manages to make the starships and their alien drives almost entirely uninteresting, and some of the most dramatic plot developments make sense mainly as dramatic plot developments. I find this annoying. Why do the Canadians and the Chinese have to go to the same place? Why can't they talk about cooperating, if there are no alternatives? When the Chinese decide to strike out against the Canadians, what do they hope to accomplish and don't they anticipate how badly they will be hurting themselves by doing so? And (quibble) why doesn't AI Richard sound more like the man he was modeled on, Richard Feynman?

Anyway ... Fans of the first book should definitely consider the second. Those who have not yet gotten hold of a copy of HAMMERED will be able to follow SCARDOWN ... but will probably be quite bored.

"Hammered," the previous book in the trilogy, is the kind of book that swallows you whole; "Scardown" is just slightly less intense.

Bear writes like a dream, with sentences that pop and sparkle, but I don't feel that the writing overwhelms the story. More than anything, I felt an incredibly strong attachment to the characters, all of them, to the point where the whole thing is just heart-wrenching. Put that with the shiny SF ideas, and really, the only thing you could ask for is more of a resolution (I'm eagerly awaiting the third book) and some proofreading on the French.

This book is well written, but it is also too much writing. The author can put together powerful short sentences but then spends waaaayyy too much time on the character interactions instead of keeping focus on the plot. Diluting those sentences into palp.

Don't get me wrong, character development, particularly in cyberpunk, is very important. Strong characters are the only balance against the grimness of the atmosphere, and the author does an excellent job of making us like the characters. The good guys are believable and you can predict them, not because they are one dimensional, but because they are too human. The drama is real. Bear can pull us in and make us want these flawed heroes to succeed. (Her villians are another matter, Valen's backgound should have been in the first book) The problem is she doesn't need to keep telling us about every little fluffy moment ad nauseum.

In short, this work isn't sure if its a romance novel with science fiction as part of the story or a scince fiction novel with a parallel romantic plot. Or a Cyberpunk novel that needed some more revisions.

No matter what, its too much. No matter what, it needed some more editing. When you can skip 30 pages in a work and discover you have not lost anything, then that's a bad sign, especially if you can skip in the latter half of a cyberpunk work where everything should be coming together. You can't skip in HARDWIRED, NEUROMANCER, or THE ENIGMA VARIATIONS.

If this work was truly the second half of a very large book that some smart editor cut down, then I can only hope that the next works are chopped down even more. Speaking of chopping, its kinda ironic that a novel concerned with our environment will waste so many trees due to it's author's excessive verbosity.

All that said, buy the book. It is entertaining, the plot is not predictable, and you already read the first half anyway.