Customer Reviews

Souls In The Great Machine

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I found Sean McMullen's Souls in the Great Machine a difficult book to evaluate. On the one hand it has some wonderful, sense of wonder-inducing ideas, and some exciting action and colourful characters. But the "colours" of the characters are a bit garish, certainly unrealistic, as they act out the author's whims. And the plot, action-filled as it is in places, also drags in other places, and is somewhat creakily structured. On the whole, though, I recommend this novel for the neat stuff, with a warning that it is far from perfect.

Many years after a disaster called Greatwinter destroyed human civilization, people in what was once Australia live in smallish city states. Technology includes fairly ingenious mechanical devices, and guns, but no electricity or electronics. A central feature of local civilization is the libraries, where intelligent men and women seem to maintain what records of the past they can. The most important library, called Libris, is in Rochester, and a new leader, Zarvora Cybeline, has just been appointed. She establishes a curious project: a huge calculating machine, the Calculor, in which the individual components are human slaves. Add to this intriguing setup a culture which places great emphasis on personal combat -- duels. And one more odd feature -- a mysterious Call, to which every animal larger than a cat, including humans, is subject.

Into this mix Sean McMullen throws Lemorel, a young provincial woman and a talented mathematician, whose ambition has led her into several duels. She ends up at Libris, with many other talented mathematicians, supporting the Calculor. There is also Zarvora, the odd genius who has invented the Calculor, and who has some mysterious use for it besides simply improving communications and tax collection. And Lemorel's talented but untrustworthy sometime lover, John Glasken. And Dorian, the mute linguist who befriends Lemorel. And Ilyire, a strange man from beyond the deserts at the edge of civilization, with an even stranger talent. And more, as the book continues.

The ideas behind this book are truly fascinating and original. I was kept reading simply by curiosity about things like the Call, and the real reason for the Calculor, and the cause of Greatwinter, and so on. And it must be said that McMullen mostly delivers in this area. The rationale for his future -- the source of the Call, the reason electronics cannot be used, the origin of Greatwinter -- all these are given explanations that work well within the context of the book (although some of the explanations are a bit far-fetched scientifically). But I still have considerable reservations.

My problems with the book were in two main areas: characters and plot. The characters are a strange set of, basically, obsessed madmen and madwomen. When the plot requires it, they are happy to fall instantly in love with a stranger, and commit murder, start wars, whatever, to resolve their relationship problems. Moreover they are all essentially immoral. For example, Zarvora, perhaps the closest thing to an overall heroine in the book, kidnaps and imprisons people for years to make the Calculor work. Lemorel has killed something like a dozen people before the book starts. Similar things can be said of many other characters. Indeed, heroes become villains and vice-versa with some regularity. This can be made to work, but not when it is done arbitrarily, as seemed the case here. As for the plot, it is discursive and disjointed. Long stretches dragged alarmingly towards the middle of the book. At times, the author resorts to summary, and authorial voice explanations of tricky bits, in order to advance us to where we need to be.

On balance, I do recommend reading Souls in the Great Machine. It has definite faults, but also definite good points. The ending is rousing and fairly satisfying. Even though the characters are not very believable, they are interesting. And the book is marked by a definite exuberance that makes it a fun read.

Souls in the Great Machine is an epic novel set in Australia of the distant future. An unspecified disaster and extended winter has erased most traces of world of the 21st century. Electricity is a memory, steam engines are forbidden, and a siren "Call" of unknown origin periodically lures untethered people and large animals to their death.

This is an ambitious book and the first half of the story is well told as we follow the ruthless librarian Zevora's struggle to build her beamflash network and Calculator. The Calculator is a primitive computer where the "circuits" are actually people who have been pressed into service. The development of the beamflash system and Calculator mirror the modern development of the personal computer and internet and you do get the feeling that such as system could be built without electricity and silicon.

After this promising start, the novel begins to unravel. Characters are constantly bumping into each other by chance as they travel around the interior of Australia. The coincidental meetings become more and more annoying as credibility is stretched. Eventually, one of Zevora's lieutenants, Lemorel, breaks away from her service and rallies what amounts to a barbarian horde which she uses to attack the cities under Zevora's control. This is a major plot point and the fighting occupies much of the novel. Unfortunately, Lemorel's motivation for starting her rebellion is not convincing and she plunges an entire continent into war for little apparent reason other than the author wanted to have the war occur.

The ending of the book feels rushed as too many characters and plots are wrapped up very quickly. Despite the multitude of characters populating this story the most interesting "character" is the Calculator itself. It seems more real that most of the people we meet because so many characters are introduced that we never really get to know any of them in any detail as one person blurs into another. Much of the great promise of the first half of the novel is dissipated in the hurried conclusion.

Souls in the Great Machine is a big book filled with lots of great big Science Fiction ideas. Enough ideas to make the average sci-fi fan drool in anticipation.

Big Idea One: Humanity in post-apocalyptic Australia is regularly beset by The Call, a strange siren call that makes everything larger then a small dog drawn to the south like lemmings are drawn to the sea.

Big Idea Two: Something is going on in outer space. Some sort of intelligence is building a structure in Earth orbit designed to reflect light away bringing on the next Greatwinter.

Big Idea Three: Despite a complete lack of technology, a huge computer is being designed and built. Not with circuit boards and transistors, but with kidnapped human beings armed with abacuses.

And there is a whole lot more that goes on. Human powered galley trains, networks of light towers transmitting coded messages across the continent, and so on.

But the focus is in this book is on the technology. Granted, it's cool technology, but after a while it really gets tiresome. By the time I was finished, I knew more then I ever wanted to know about post-apocalyptic trains. In fact, this story could have been call Souls Riding the Great Trains. Ultimately, I cared more about the machines in this book then the people.

And here is the big problem. The characters act in an illogical and inconsistent manner. The author suffers from a God complex. Need a war in the West? So-and-so will start one. Why did so-and-so do that? Because the author made them do it. The characters are not evil, they are written that way.

Once the characters start to careen off track, the story follows. What begins as compelling story-telling, ends as a train wreck of inconsistencies. Even the Big Ideas get wasted (the source of The Call is just plain stupid and disappointing). For me, this is not Book One in the Greatwinter Series, it's Book Only.

Almost every problem I have with science fiction is represented in this sprawling book-a ton of really interesting ideas poorly served by a rambling and disjointed plot populated by too many hastily drawn characters. I had greatly enjoyed McMullen's earlier book, The Centurion's Empire and was hoping he'd be able to exercise the same control he showed in that book, but this was a bit of a disappointment.

The worldbuilding is quite impressive. Set almost two millennia from now, the world is still recovering from a nuclear winter. In Australia a low-tech civilization putters along, with power resting in the hands of librarians. A new head overlibrarian is elected and brings change, as she ruthlessly builds "The Calculator", a primitive computer using imprisoned people as circuits, and extends a series of communication towers across the various fiefdoms and emirates. The initial exploration of this is quite interesting, but as the overlibrarian's power grows, McMullen starts adding more and more storylines to the mix.

It seems that an ancient sunshade being formed by nanotechnology is threatening to block out the sun and initiate a new Ice Age, unless the overlibrarian can do something. Then there's the barbarian horde being mustered by one of her former protégés-for reasons that are never really clear to me, other than the need to have a big war in the book. Then there's the mysterious force that sweeps across the land intermittently, causing all who aren't tied down to walk due south forever. Then there's a whole genetics subplot. Not to mention an awfully confusing series of romances and affairs, you really do need a scorecard to keep track of everyone.

The ideas are all individually really interesting, it's just that there are too many of them at once and the characters are too flimsy to carry them. Coincidence comes into play all too often, as characters are constantly running into each other, and too many of them are cast from the same obsessive mold and act altogether arbitrarily. It doesn't help that there are abrupt leaps of time in the middle of chapters, out of nowhere will pop up the declaration that five years has passed, for example. Also, the book is badly in need of a map. Geography is an integral part of the plot, and without a map to clarify things, the reader is often literally lost.

I salute the McMullen's imagination for ideas, but this book is just too long and haphazard to properly enjoy. I doubt I'll be seeking out it's sequels, The Miocene Arrow and Eyes of the Calculor.

This is a good story full of great and interesting ideas and a fascinating future world. Yes the characters are driven and rather immoral but then many people in the real world are (politicians for example). I do think however that some of the characters in this novel change their behaviour and loyalties too frequently and without sufficient reason, particularly Lemorel who's conversion from a loyal Librarian to menacing warlord is odd and unconvincing. Ditto for Ilyire who's changes and motivations are very unconvincing and inexplicable.

The story also shows signs of padding - too many characters and too many incidents that could have been omitted without loss. The pressure to produce a BIG trilogy with 600 pp books seems to have resulted in a story that could have been improved by better editing - the story would have been better in 350-400 pages with excess scenes and characters removed. It would have made it easier to follow and held the readers attention better.

I've read a collection of McMullen's short stories - Call to The Edge - where in The Eyes of The Green Lancer he introduces the post-Great Winter world and some of the events and characters he later expanded on in STGM. It's a very good collection by a skilled and interesting writer. I think the main problem with STGM is he tried to expand it into a Big Fat Novel from that short story when he should have been satisfied with just a regular novel (I suspect his publisher is to blame in large part - don't get me started on the vogue for big fat door-stopper multi-volume sagas in SF and Fantasy, suffice it to say they're killing the field and it's time to stop!)

Given all this however it's still a good story set in a fascinating future world and I want to find out what happens next. I'll buy the second volume (Miocene Arrow) and see if McMullen's style settles down by then and he sticks more to the essentials and leaves out the kitchen sink.

A masterpiece. Set 2000 years hence, after a glocal ice age, the story takes place in Australia, where a new low-tech civilization has taken the place of the technology-driven world of today. Electrical technology has not redeveloped, and steam engines are banned for fear of causing a second greenhouse catastrophe. Zarvora Cybeline, the head librarian at a regional city, builds a new "calculor" -- a computer -- wherein hundreds of convicts skilled in math perform functions on abaci.

Knowledge, and computational power, are the seeds of a new empire. As a librarian, I particularly enjoyed the depiction of the heroine of the novel as a strong, powerful figure in this future society. In what other works of fiction are librarians in positions of power? I look forward to future works by this author.

This book is an excellent beginning to the author's Greatwinter series, although it is a complete work in and of itself. The writing style is a bit unusual at times, but the plot is superb, the characters are memorable, and the ideas are absolutely fascinating. I have read this novel (and its sequels, The Miocene Arrow and Eyes of the Calculor) several times, and each time I appreciate again how good they are.

The novels are post-apocalyptic in a sense, though the apocalypse is on-going (enforced by telepathic cetozoids and orbital battlestations -- don't worry, it will make more sense when you read it.) Australian civilization, however, has become quite advanced given the constraints, to the point of rediscovering the theory/practice of computers (though with a human-based operating system rather than an electronic one.) The plot proceeds quite logically from there.

I particularly like McMullen's characters: John Glasken, a likeable rascal who loves women and life; Zarvora Cybeline, a brilliant mathematician and lonely head of the powerful library system; Lemorel Milderellen, a precocious librarian who is driven mad by the loss of her love; and so many others. After a couple reads, these characters will seem like old friends.

In short, these novels are well worth your time. Though the backdrop and the author's style may take a little getting used to, it is more than worth the effort. Also, unlike many books by today's "series authors," this one can stand alone if you don't like it for some reason. However, the quality of the work is such that I suspect you will want to read the rest . . .

Make no mistake about it--Souls in the Great Machine is a wonderful page turner. Although I have a few caveats, for the most part this novel kept me riveted. The worldbuilding is excellent. I felt wholly immersed in the world of paralines, the Call, and the Calculor (in essence, a modern computer mimiced by thousands of people doing the calculating functions rather than electronic processors). Too often in epics like this there is a monoculture, and everything is painted in Good Society vs. Evil Society. But everything, here, is blended in shades of gray. The heros have serious flaws and limitations, and you always at least understand the motivations of the villans, even if you dislike them.

With that said, there were some places where I looked up from the book, quizzically, and had serious questions about the direction that McMullen was going. First of all--major characters CONTINUALLY kept bumping into each other, even after travelling great distances! This really stretched credibility at some points; I mean, come on, this is Australia, not Rhode Island. Secondly, the book has a weird take on slavery. I understand that the author is trying to depict a culture that is alien from our own, but...I don't know, it made me uncomfortable and squeamish at times when the underlying theme was "slavery is ok if it furthers the advance of society." I understand that this is fiction, and certainly the author is NOT advocating slavery, but--be warned. There is one point in particular where a particular group of slaves are released and they all say in essence, "No! We like being slaves! Take us back!" Now--would EVERY one of these particular slaves say this? I think not, but this is what McMullen writes. Kind of creepy if you ask me. Lastly (although this isn't a fault of the book per se), the jacket text has to be the absolute worst I ever read, and definitely cast a pallor in the beginning of reading the book. It was as if whoever wrote this jacket text had no clue what the book was about. Of course, I know some people ignore these altogether but I tend to use the jacket text as something of an anchor for the first few chapters of a novel.

In some, I definitely recommend this book, and while I don't think the qualms I had with it will be shared with everyone, in my mind these flaws prevent this book from being rated a classic, a la Hyperion, Dune, or Book of the New Sun.

This entertaining book is set in Australia approximately 2 millenia from now. A post-nuclear winter world, Australia resembles a combination of Renaissance Italy and Medieval Spain, only with giant heliographic signalling towers and wind powered railroads. Further technological development is blocked by a number of factors too complex to explain. The leading character, a woman of scientific and political genius, perceives a threat to civilization. Centuries earlier, during human civilization's technological apogee, concern about the greenhouse effect had resulted in the start of a project to develop a sun shield around the Earth. Constructed by self perpetuating automata, the sun shield is nearing completion. Deployment of the sun shield would result in another ice age. The heroine has to find a way to stop this, apparently without use of electricity or even steam power. Her first step is to develop a computer, which she does by use of relays of humans with abaci (a device used in one of Arthur Clarke's stories). From this innovation follows a series of scientific, technological, and political revolutions, delineated well in the course of following the main plot line. This book is written well despite a series of plot lines and a number of characters. An ambitious and enjoyable book.

I was a little torn on how to review this book. I can't even begin to tally the number of eye rolls it triggered, for a variety of reasons. The characters are not remotely believable, for the most part, only one or two even seem human, really. The writing, while pretty good in parts, occasionally degenerates momentarily into about 8th grade quality storytelling, with clunky scenes and lots of instances of "telling rather than showing". Quite a bit was predictable, and annoyingly, the characters seem to miss the predictable things that they would seem to have enough info to figure out themselves. There are sudden jumps in time, lots of pointless and uninspiring battle scenes (and some less pointless and more inspiring ones, to be fair), and something of a weird obsession with breasts.

Despite all this, I find myself having begun volume two tonight. Despite all it's flaws, there are just too many interesting ideas here for me to resist, and I absolutely love the setting. I really wish they included a map...I'd like to see all the unfamiliar names superimposed upon the familiar geography.

While this will never rank among my all time favorites, it kept me interested, which is really all I ask from a book. I'd give it a qualified recommendation to my friends...