Customer Reviews

The Squares of the City

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Let's strip away the conceit of basing a book on a chess game, and let's strip away the idea of subliminally manipulating people to do what you wish. It didn't qualify as science fiction then, and it doesn't now. It is a minor plot point anyways.

What we really have here is a book of urban class warfare. The haves, have-nots, immigrants and natives, whites and coloreds mixing it up, not always aligned as you'd think, in a cauldron about to boil.

Some parts are well done, and Brunner touches on some of the themes we'd see in Shockwave Rider, Stand on Zanzibar and Sheep Look Up. In fact our traffic analyst protagonist with his detached, no-roots lifestyle is similar to the assumed background of Shockwave Rider's Nick. The tension builds slowly, too slowly I'm afraid, leading to the eventual explosion and denouement.

Though the conceit of having each character be a piece in a chess game is interesting, I found it forced the plot and took away from characterization. That along with the slow pace of the plot made this only an average read for me.