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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'Epic' SciFi page-turner, May 31, 2008
This review is from: Stealing Light (Paperback)
Doesn't have quite the depth of Ian M Banks 'Culture' novels, but overall a very good story, well written, and fast paced. Interesting twist in that humans are not the dominant lifeform here, but actaully one of many client species. Set in a fairly-distant future (not as far as "Culture" novels), Humans find (after inventing FTL communications, but not travel) that only one species in the galaxy has FTL capability, and they're not going to share. Instead they provide all the long distance travel between stars as a contractual service. Limiting humans (and their other client races) to a defined area of the Milky Way, seperated from the other species. The blurb is pretty short, but the story is about an insular group of humans who discover a very old ship with FTL drives in a system they were exploring prior to contracting a colony there. They plan to steal the ship for their own use, but need outside help to accomplish this task, (the main character of the story). I won't go beyond that, but needless to say, they can't just get on the derelict and go. All in all, a very high-tech, hard science story with good characters and a plot that will keep you guessing a bit.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Space opera the way it should be!, August 24, 2008
Stealing light is space opera in the tradition of Alastair Reynolds' revelation space novels. In fact it could have been part of the same universe: Eridana's Yellowstone (Redstone), conjoiners (machine heads), hidden cache artefacts... It's all there! Dakota Merrick, a machine head, is trying to make a living with her semi intelligent space ship Piri Reis. Where she goes, trouble seems to follow. Flash back chapters make clear she was involved in a violent incident between a faction of Machine heads and Freeholders, due to corrupted Machine head's implants. As a result Machine heads were forced to abandon their implants. But what caused the corruption? Dakota -like many other Machine heads- can't bear the loss of implants and finds a way to wear them illegally. She becomes the centre of a web of intrigues triggered by the Shoal, the only race with a working star drive. What follows is a tantalizing chain of events leading to a hidden artefact. But knowledge without wisdom may lead to destruction... The only drawback I found was an overdose of violence with innocent victims. Yet this is great space opera! The open end makes me long for the sequel.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
fun, not new, September 14, 2008
This review is from: Stealing Light (Paperback)
An entertaining read, though it felt as if the universe was slapped together from pieces of other novels from the same genre. Alastair Reynolds, Ken Macleod, and Ian Banks should be getting some royalties for this one. Regardless, I actually liked it enough. As I started to write this review I actually confused this book with Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. Don't read these two books too close together! They appear to have the same lead character in them!!!111one
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