Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed but interesting, October 14, 2004
It's the 23rd century, and the world is a wasteland caused by pollution and global warming. Exposure to the unfiltered air or water leads rapidly to cancer or other nasty conditions. Giant corporations, now known as Coms, dominate the world, and their privileged executive class as well as many of their protected employees, or "protes", live in domed cities. The Coms are in a more or less constant struggle with the Orgs, especially the biggest, baddest Org of them all, the WTO. (It's worth mentioning that a significant, and possibly dominant, part of the WTO are its AIs.) The Coms are not the good guys.
This doesn't seem like a promising set-up, and I have many complaints about the details. Despite that, I found myself enjoyng the book.
Dominc Jedes has wealth and position beyond the dreams of avarice. He's the (cloned) son of the president of ZahlenBank, one of the most powerful of the Coms. If he's lately been having some disagreements with his father, finding some of his decisions affecting protes to be a little too ruthlessly pragmatic, he nevertheless believes in the system and loves his father. His father's approaching death is an added source of tension between them, as the elder Jedes has chosen to forego what aggressive medical care could do for him, in favor of creating a neural profile that will live on in the computer network after his physi cal death.
On what proves to be the last day of his father's physical life, Dominic unwisely makes a joke in a board meeting about dealing with the problem of an unprofitable mining sub that ZahlenBank got in a foreclosure by freeing the protes and giving them the sub. This unfortunately strikes his father and the board as a wonderfully clever idea--no costs for continuing to support these now-useless workers! Then Dear Old Dad promptly dies, the freed protes start broadcasting to the world for more discont ented protes to join them, and ZahlenBank is suddenly in deep, deep trouble. The WTO steps in with an offer to arrange negotiations, if Dominic will meet with the protes alone, accompanied only by a WTO agent. He reluctantly agrees, and unhappily finds th at he is accompanied also by the hated neural profile of his dead father. (The NP insists it's the real thing; Dominic does not agree. Dominic also believes it lacks the humanity and honor his father had; I think the evidence is that he had an overly-rosy view of his father.) In short order, Dominic is getting a very exciting look at how the other 90% lives.
As I said, I have a lot of specific complaints. The background feels as if it was insufficiently thought out. Europe seems to be about all that sort of survived the collapse. If the ice caps completely melted, why didn't all that cold, fresh water running into the Atlantic do bad things to the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Drift? If Europe is the last economy standing, why is the basic currency the deutchdollar rather than the euro? And if giant multinational corporations are the bad guys, how can the WTO be the good guys? And Dominc seems quite improbaby naïve. What Dominic isn't, though, is either stupid, or improbably virtuous. He's a basically likable guy who's a product of his society and upbringing. He has believably human and reactions to the individuals he meets, for both good and ill, and alters his assumptions about how the world really works only with a plausible amount of resistance and mental pain. All in all, this is an enjoyable light read.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fast and compelling, August 4, 2004
This is an entertaining novel with a fast-moving plot. Banker Dominic Jedes must deal with the computer-generated replica of his domineering dead father--just at the moment that he must go quell a worker rebellion in a submarine. The characters are well-drawn--and boy, do they have relationship and boundary issues! The conflict with the workers turns out to be much more complex than the financial data that Dominic is accustomed to handling at his office. Very enjoyable. I couldn't put it down, and then I hated for it to end!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Neurolink, August 2, 2004
I loved this book! NEUROLINK is both suspenseful and thought provoking. The action is fast and unpredictable. The descriptions are mesmerizing, and the characters really come alive -- especially Dominic, the main character, plus the weird nano-computer that's living inside his eye. Very fresh ideas. This book kept me turning the pages right through to the end. I liked this every bit as much as Buckner's first book, HYPERTHOUGHT, which was also a great read.
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