American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I picked American Gods mainly because I knew Neil Gaimans writing from the Sandman comic series series which I loved. I was curious how his style would translate into a non visual medium. It turns out that it translates fairly well. While the novel lacks the gravitas of the Morpheus it still a good read.

Gaiman’s favorite thing to do is mixing the modern setting with myth and magic. I’m not really sure how to classify this genre. It is not really fantasy, but also not science fiction. Either way, it worked splendidly in Sandman, and it works very well in American Gods.

The core idea behind the novel is a question as to what happens to ancient gods that are no longer worshiped. In Gaiman’s universe gods sprout into being as a result of human worship. Once they are no longer worshiped or remembered they fade away. Unless they can trick, beg or pay people to worship them a bit, even if just for one night. As the title of the book suggests, Gaiman mainly concentrates on gods who have been brought to America by migrants from various parts of the world and then promptly forgotten or replaced by other deities.

The nice thing about these gods is that they are actual characters rather than walking stereotypes. Very often stories that include famous mythical beings don’t take time to flesh them out and show the reader their personalities. Gaiman however takes a great care to introduce them first and foremost as people. To that end, he even avoids calling them by their proper names to avoid invoking certain images. For example, if I tell you to think about the Viking god Odin, in your minds eye you are likely to see this muscular grizzled warrior type with long hair, braided beard and the canonical horned helmet on his head. But in the book, most of the time he goes by Mr. Wednesday – a clever older gentleman and a con-artist with a glass eye.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I’m definitely planning to pick up Gaiman’s other book set in the same universe: Anasi Boys.

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

I have been slowly working my way through Dick’s mind-fuck catalog but I have yet to encounter something that would make as big of an impression on me as VALIS did. Ubik in the mind-fuck department Ubik is a rather straightforward story. Granted, for a while it is hard to figure out what exactly is going on, but Dick ties up all the lose ends in the final chapters, and everything makes sense.

The setting is rather interesting and a bit trippy. It assumes existence of people gifted with various paranormal talents such as telepathy, precognition and etc. For each talent there is also an ant-talent that can be used to subdue it. So for example, if you think that your company was infiltrated by a telepath hired by your competitor to steal your trade secrets, you can hire an anti-talent who will “jam” his ability by the virtue of their mere presence. Protagonists of the story do precisely that. They are all employees of a anti-talent agency, and use their skills to thwart telepaths, precogs and others.

That is until a failed mission which turns out to be a trap set by an unscrupulous rival agency (that hires talents which is where the conflict of interests arises). The team suffers some causalities, but most members escape unscratched. Or so they thought. Following the mission, weird things start to happen all around them. People start vanishing, various object seem to regress in time (a flat screen tv becomes a CRT which later mutates into progressively more antique radio sets) and their dead boss seems to be sending them messages via newspaper advertisements and tv ad spots.

Hothouse by Brian Aldis

Hothouse is a blast from the past. It was written in 1962 but you probably wouldn’t be able to tell because the novels action takes place in a very, very distant future when the sun has expanded in size, as it usually happens to stars near the end of their lifespan. This has significantly increased Earth’s mean temperatures, and also disturbed it’s gravitational relationship with the moon. The satellite got knocked out of the stable orbit, and it’s influence over many centuries has caused Earth to cease rotating around it’s axis creating perpetual day and night zones. Increase in temperature and lack of the day-night cycle caused Earth’s flora to bloom and push out most of the animal life to dwell in perpetual twilight at the fringe of the day zone. One of the few members of the animal kingdom that still survive in the vibrant jungles lit by the dying sun are humans. Sadly they have regressed quite significantly losing technology and becoming much smaller of stature. They now live mostly as tree dwelling hunter/gatherer tribes.

A young, arrogant and stubborn member of such a tribe gets himself banished for recklessly endangering lives of his tribesmen. He and his mate then set out on a journey through the hothouse world that will put them in contact with astonishing variety of weird creatures and tribes they did not even know existed. They meet semi-sentient termites, intelligent parasitic fungi, various near-human tribes (some friendly, others hostile) and various representatives of the vibrant, carnivorous and majestic juiced up flora.

The novel is basically a grand tour the force across Earth in it’s final years before the sun goes nova. Aldis plays around dreaming up creatures with extreme evolutionary adaptations and tries to figure out how various species would cope with the drastic changes in their natural environment. This is probably a spoiler [OBLIGATORY SPOILER TAG] but Aldis seems to be fan of Pansperimia. The final chapters of the book reveal that in response to the worsening conditions on Earth, some species of the overgrown flora has somehow evolved to become biological escape capsules that gather biological mass around them and jet it out into space where it can be carried by solar winds and potentially “pollinate” other worlds. He describes evolution it as a process that was once wound up, and now is winding down, with conditions favoring smaller, simpler and less complex forms. Before all life is destroyed in the nova, it will reduce itself to a state in which it might survive extreme the scorching heath of the final explosion, and centuries in open space, to once again reawaken somewhere else. Interesting idea, if not a little silly.

I found it a bit grating, probably because it was threading dangerously closely to the intelligent design line of reasoning. But I believe Aldis wrote it long before fringe religious groups developed the anti-intellectualist philosophy that spawned that worldview, so he is excused.

Btw, I’m quite astonished how many geeks out there don’t actually read books. I have talked to many people who were otherwise perfectly normal: into science fiction, video games, tabletop games, anime and etc. But when I asked them for book recommendations I quickly realized that they were mostly persisting on a diet composed of technical books, magazines and graphic novels. What gives? When I was growing up, reading real books was absolutely crucial. Not knowing your Tolkien and your Herbert was unthinkable. Terry Pratchet and Douglas Adams were almost as frequently quoted at the gaming table as Monty Python skits. How is this no longer part of being a geek? I hate to sound like the after school special here, but reading is good for the branes! It makes them think good!

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross

I absolutely loved Glasshouse so I decided to pick up another book by Charlie Stross. Btw, the man has a blog and he can be quite funny at times. He seems to be quite internet savvy, so I’m surprised he actually titled one of his upcoming books Rule 34. Should we tell him what it means? Or maybe he already knows and this is intentional? Anyway, I digress.

Singularity Sky is built around a very interesting concept: what happens when two civilizations, one low tech, one high-post-singularity-tech come together and start trading. The New Republic is a multiple-world nation that exists in a galactic civilization. It was established by neo-Luddites who ban most forms of advanced technology. They try to keep their cultural and technological sophistication at around the Victorian era level. Of course they do employ some modern machinery for trade and defense. For example they do have a modern space fleet, atomic trains and etc. The idea is to use technology when and where absolutely needed, but abstain from it at all other times. Their leaders think that living without the luxuries offered by modern medicine, electronics and recreation equipment makes their people strong and pure (or something like that). Unfortunately one of New Republic colony worlds comes into contact with The Festival – a very advanced deep-space faring community. It’s members are infovores – they travel across the galaxy seeking information. They like to park themselves in an orbit of an inhabited planet and trade with it’s inhabitants. If you tell them a story they will make your fish come true. They can do that because they have advanced nano-technology that can assemble just about anything out of loose materials they mine from nearby asteroids and moons, and vast data banks full of templates for any crazy contraption you could dream up.

Unsurprisingly the shit quickly hits the fan. At first poor, downtrodden citizens of the New Republic predictably ask for things like money, gold and other riches and within days the world becomes so saturated with precious materials that they become worthless. Eventually people start asking for other things – like super powers, flying castles and (if they are smart and educated) their own cornucopia machines – nano-assemblers capable of making anything out of anything. This does not sit well with the ruling class so they decide to send a military force to wipe out the Festival and restore order.

Very interesting idea, but the book is nowhere near as good as in Glasshouse. It is a pretty decent science fiction spy novel but it seems to drag a bit in the middle, and then ends very abruptly. So you have this intense buildup leading up to a very low key, anti-climactic finale. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it would work much better in a more condensed form as a short story where the buildup wouldn’t be so prolonged and the ending wouldn’t seem so abrupt.

Still, it is definitely a good read. Stross is very imaginative and I love his vision of the future populated by post singularity AI-gods, nano nechnology, quantum entanglement communication devices and interesting take on FTL travel. If you decide to pick it up, keep in mind it is not Glasshouse. Dial your expectations at a bit below half of your Glasshouse appreciation and I think you should be fine.

Marooned in Real Time by Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge is the guy who sort of coined the term singularity, so not surprisingly his novel revolves about that subject. Or rather it is a book about a small group of people who have missed the singularity event completely. How do you miss it? Well, given sufficiently advanced technology you can do pretty much anything. These folks used bobbles – powerful, impenetrable and indestructible stasis fields that stop entropy and allow people to travel forward in time. You can bobble yourself up and wake up a hundred or a thousand years into the future and you won’t age a day.

Bunch of people bobble themselves up for too long overshoot the singularity event. They wake up only to realize everyone is gone. Earth is no longer inhabited and all the people (save for handful of bobbled castaways) just abruptly dissipated without any evidence of a mass migration, a world war or a globe spanning species extinction event. Everything points toward an instant technological rapture but it’s nature and mechanics are unknown to those who were left behind.

The survivors band together and bobble forward, popping up every other century to find a good time period to stop and re-start human civilization. At one point someone is trapped outside the stasis field, and perishes as the rest of humanity slumbers inside. The last cop on earth – a late twenty first century detective is hired to discover whether foul play was involved, and if yes, who did it.

The book is definitely worth reading for several reasons. Firstly it has a very interesting spin on time travel (forward only). Secondly, Vinge has really interesting things to say about technological singularity. If you are a science fiction buff and a futurist you will be interested. Thirdly, it is a pretty good detective novel – complete with Sherlock Holmes style reveal in the third act. The characters are interesting, they all have their own history, agenda and skeletons in their closet. So there is a real tangible human element attached to the ongoing singularity discussion. It makes the book a light and fast read.

Consider Phlebeas by Ian M. Banks

Ian M. Banks does not fuck around. You see, most authors grow attached to their characters and refuse to kill them unless it would make for a gut wrenching, dramatic scene in the third volume of their epic trilogy. Mr. Banks is not one of these authors. He kills main characters by truck load. Sometimes he kills them so fast that he doesn’t even have time to give them any convincing characterization. Then he introduces some new characters and kills them as well. I am serious here, this book is a bloodbath, and I was not expecting this.

It’s actually hard to describe what this book is about in just a few words. There is an ongoing war between two galaxy spanning civilizations. On one side you have the Culture: society of radical technocrats ruled by super-bright AI’s. On the other hand you have Idrians – a theocratic, expansionist alien empire. During one of the battles, one of Culture’s AI’s gets separated from his allies and takes refuge on a forbidden planet. That planet is a protectorate of a unimaginably powerful post-singularity AI-god and off limits to anyone without an invitation. Idrians however have an ace in their sleeve – they happen to employ a post-human spy who used to live on the forbidden planet, but then left in search of adventures. So they task him with locating and capturing the Culture mind so that it can be tapped for valuable intel. Of course his mission goes horribly wrong before it even starts and there are many, many casualties before he even sets out to visit the forbidden planet.

If I had to classify this book, I would call it an action-oriented space opera. It is definitely fast paced, dynamic and violent. But it is not completely devoid of cool SF ideas. For example Banks introduces the concept of Culture orbitals – I talked about them in my Megastructures post. Essentially they are huge ring-worlds that orbit a star without actually encircling it.

Basically, I loved everything about the Culture. I also liked the quite original and gruesome doomsday cult that makes a brief appearance in the second act. On the other hand I absolutely hated the whole Future-Yu-Gi-Oh card game bullshit. I don’t know – for some reason, I can’t stomach made up card games, especially when the author describes them as if they were the best thing ever. I just find these things so kitschy and contrived. I appreciate the fact that the author is trying to come up with a brand new game that would be played in the distant future, but… No, just no. Having the characters play classic games like poker, chess or go is an old and overused science fiction trope but it works far better than the alternative. Actually scratch that – no one ever uses go in that aspect. And they should – the rules are simple but the game play is incredibly deep – and it’s obscure enough that if you don’t tell people what it really is, they might even give you credit for inventing something awesome.

Not surprisingly I decided against picking up Banks’ next book set in the Culture universe because it was titled “The Player of the Game”. Guess what that book is all about? Yeah, it’s about the thing that I hated the most in Consider Phlebas.

In other words the book is a mixed bag. It’s fast paced, has some really cool ideas and some really crappy bits like the stupid card game. Banks skims a bit on characterization and so only two or three characters in a cast of about twenty or so actually have personalities or some sort of back story. Sometimes I had hard time keeping track of who just died (or walked into the room, but the former happens more often in this book), and had to flip few pages back to find out the two line description that introduced this character. All in all it is pretty readable. You can probably pick it up, and breeze through it in a few evenings even though it is actually quite thick of a volume. Take it to the beach or something. Just don’t expect anything too deep or thought provoking. Actually no, I lied. There are few philosophical bits and visionary concepts in there but they are well hidden under a mountain of dead characters and obscured by that atrocious card game thing.

1. I love to read, and this blog is basically about thins I love so it would be silly not to include it
2. I’m always looking for good book recommendations, and every time I post a book review I get “if you liked this, you should check out that” type of responses in the comments which makes me happy
3. I know some of you folks don’t read fiction on a principle, but I keep hoping that if I expose you to these good (or bad) SF titles you might be tempted to pick one up at some point

So yeah. Those are my reasons. Now, on to the reviews.

Reality Dysfunction Part 2: Expansion

If you have been following this blog for some time, you might remember my rather positive review of the first part of the book. It was not the greatest piece of literature I have read, but it was somewhat original and interesting. Alphast warned me that it does not get any better than that, and he was right. Hamilton has some good ideas and opens up some very interesting plot lines but he often fails to capitalize on them. It almost seems that his universe would actually be more interesting without the possessed who are overpowered to the point of being boring.

For example, I really enjoyed the idea of a colonist group on a maiden world being subverted from within by a former cultist serving his “jail” term as a forced laborer. Quinn Dexter was over the top evil, but the idea was quite good – this clash between group of idealist searching for a better life and cynical, hardened criminals who were nevertheless ensnared by charismatic demagogue. Of course shit hits the fan, possessed appear and the planet becomes some kind of dream-like realm full of phantasmagorical beasts, buildings that don’t exist and armies of mounted bulletproof knights who can shoot energy beams out of their eyes.

Joshua Calvert graduates from an endearing underdog to a walking paragon of perfection. It is really hard to root for a guy who can’t do no wrong, gets the girl every time and is exceedingly cocky about it too. Most of the characters are flat, one dimensional and stereotypical like that. Calvert couldn’t be more awesome if he tried, while Dexter is so fucked up and evil, that even the souls of legendary psychopathic murderers, villains and baby killers of previous centuries are scared and repulsed by him. The plot develops at a glacial pace. Which is actually quite an accomplishment considering Hamiltons fast paced narrative. I noticed for example that he very much likes to go on tangents and introduce new characters which he will then follow for for 20 or so pages, describing their experiences in painstaking detail only to have them die or be possessed at the end never to be heard from again. Then he turns around and glosses over crucial plot points – such as a visit to the alien village. What should have been a major development becomes just one of the few stops during a crazy escape sequence, with hordes of angry enemies chasing the heroes.

There are two more books left in this series, but I actually didn’t even bother picking any of them up.

Divine Invasion

Divine Invasion is technically the second book in the theologically themed trilogy of Philip K Dick, that starts with VALIS. It is not a sequel or continuation however. It does not even take place in the same universe for that matter. It is by far the most Science Fiction themed of the three books. Unlike the other two it includes space travel, powerful AI, paranoid totalitarian nation states and etc. Of course it also contains Yah – a god (or the God, depending on how you look at it) who was banished from Earth, but tries to reclaim it by being born as a human child. Sadly, the child suffers severe brain damage, and forgets his true nature until he meets a mysterious girl that helps him to remember. Of course all of this might actually be a bad hallucination experienced by a guy who is sleeping in a cryogenic fugue waiting for a spleen replacement. Dick dives into mystical gnosticism, muses about the nature of divinity and faith itself and never really bothers telling readers what is real and what is imagined or hallucinated. It’s trippy, thought provoking and awesome. You should read it.

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

This is the third book in the series started by VALIS but just like the previous two it stands alone, sharing no characters or plot elements with the other two. In fact, the book is not even Science Ficton. If you go to a book store, you will of course find it in the SF section among other Philip K. Dick books but it is not really where it belongs, because it contains exactly zero fictional elements. It is a story about life, death, coping with loss and about irrationality in face of a tragedy. It follows Angel Archer, a young woman who is a friend to a popular, Episcopalian bishop, and a wife to his son. When her husband commits suicide it puts both the bishop and his mistress on a downward spiral that eventually leads to their deaths. A fate that Angel sees coming but is powerless to stop. It’s a story about guilt, religious zeal, faith, fate and insanity. It is the examination of the thin line that divides rationality from pathological irrationality, and how easy it is to cross it.

It is the most coherent, down to earth and possibly the best written out of the three books. The plot unravels slowly, and the story is contemplative and philosophical. It will not blow your mind the way VALIS and Divine Invasion did. It does not feature shocking plot twists or crazy revelations. It’s just a damn good book.

Titan

I picked up Titan by John Varley along side Reality Dysfunction and Startide Rising because it was in the same batch of reviews I have read. It starts of as hard SF but quickly devolves into almost a Fantasy story as the group of astronauts explores gigantic alien made habitat that is orbiting Jupiter. This artificial satellite turns out to be inhabited by many intelligent races such as friendly centaurs and aggressive winged “angels” that seem to be at war with each other for reasons neither side seems to understand. Neither of these races seems to posses the technology required to build the structure or even maintain it – though most seem to worship or at least venerate some sort of mysterious god-like entity that seems to at the hub of the station. Since the astronauts crash landed on the station losing their ship, contacting this entity or at least reaching the control center of the station may be the only hope for their rescue.

It is a decent read, with some pretty good ideas. Varley is pretty good at describing his wacky alien world an its inhabitants, though the friendly singing centaurs with two sets of genitals were a bit jarring. The ending is a bit underwhelming too. The author spends a lot of time building up to this final reveal, which turns out to be a classic wizard of Oz scenario. Then everyone sits down, drinks some tea and listens to plot exposition that explains how the habitat really works.

Titan is for the most part a decent SF/Fantasy adventure novel. It is not ground breaking or mind shattering in any way. But it is a decent read. I think I enjoyed it a bit more than Reality Dysfunction sequel. Unlike Hamilton, Varley does try to give his character some psychological depth and make them quirky, conflicted and interesting. Supposedly the saga gets better in the later books, as he describes even weirder sections of the alien habitat and its effects on the newly arrived human inhabitants. I might pick up the next volume at some point just to see if he goes anywhere with the ideas he established in the first one.

As usual, book recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Flowers for Algernon

WTF is Algernon? Well, Algernon is a lab rat. Not an ordinary lab rat mind you. He is a genius among his kind – the smartest rat that has ever lived. All thanks to experimental procedure that caused a very rapid, incremental growth of his intellectual potential. But this is not his story. The book is about Charlie – a nice, young fellow who was born with a very low IQ whose only wish is to one day become as smart as his friends. Charlie’s dream comes true when he gets picked as the first human subject to undergo the same procedure that was made Algernon into a rat-brainac.

The procedure is an overwhelming success. Over the next few weeks, Charlie’s intellect steadily increases. He starts learning new things. He devours books, and seeps knowledge like a sponge. He starts noticing things that he was previously oblivious too. He sees that his friends never really laughed with him, but at him. He sees that the doctors who came up with the procedure are really small minded, flawed people. Soon he intellectually overtakes all of them, and takes it upon himself to finish their research.

There is one problem: Algernon’s awesome mental powers start fading and deteriorate. Will charlie succumb to the same fate? Or does he have enough time to find a solution?

The novel is a great read. It is both moving, poignant and cleverly written. Keys frames his story as a compilation of Charlie’s progress reports he was instructed to write for the experiment, which at some point evolve into a very eloquent, introspective and thoughtful diary.

Fall of Hyperion

This novel is the continuation of Simmon’s Hyperion, which I reviewed previously. It picks up, right where the first novel left off. This means that you don’t really want to be reading it as a stand alone novel. You can, but you will be really confused as Simmons assumes the readers are already familiar with his complex universe and the main characters so he doesn’t even attempt to explain things for the new readers. He jumps right into the action and continues the story of the last Shrike pilgrims on Hyperion.

The book is good, but not as great as the first one. If you liked the main narrative that connected the different tales, you will like this novel as well because it is basically just more of that. If you found the main source of enjoyment from reading the tales themselves, and didn’t care about the pilgrims’ current predicament you might be a bit disappointed.

The book continues to build up the story and gives us glimpses to the parts of his universe he previously glossed over. For example, we get a first hand look at the elusive and mysterious Ousters. We find out more about the Techno Core and the real purpose of the second Earth and the Keats construct. We get to meet Kassad’s mysterious lover and learn about her relationship to the shrike. We found out what happened to Het Masteen and learn his reasons for the pilgrimage. And of course we finally find out what is Shrike and what is the true purpose of the Time Tombs.

So while the first book left you hanging, the second book ties up all the loose ends, and answers all the questions. Which is both good and bad. It’s good because it shows that Simmons didn’t just write bunch of open ended plot hooks to create an illusion of depth where there is none (this strategy is used extensively by the writers on LOST). He actually thought this whole thing out and created a logical, cohesive story. It is bad, because some readers may feel disappointed with Simmon’s answers. Some people say these answers are to shallow and to simple and that they do not live up to their expectations created by the first book. Others say they are too convoluted and muddled to follow. I found them adequate and satisfying. They do however take out some of the magic and mystery out of the first book. You will look at it in a different light.

I consider the book worth reading, and I’m looking forward to reading Endymion: the next novel in the Hyperion cycle. I enjoy Simmon’s style, I find his storytelling captivating and his Hyperion universe very fascinating. I’m hooked. Simmons has likely found a life long fan in me.

Startide Rising

What can I say about Startide Rising… Ok, let’s try this: have you ever watched the show called Sea Quest DSV? I remember that show mostly for the Wesley Crusher type kid genius and a talking dolphin. Reading this novel was a bit like watching that show back in the day. Talking dolphins, talking chimps, aliens, mind readers and one bad-ass special forces hero that can’t be killed.

Brinn’s Uplift idea is actually quite intriguing. This is why I picked up his book. In his universe, sentient races don’t just evolve. Instead they are uplifted (genetically modified towards sentience) by other sentient races that came before them. An uplifted race becomes a client and must serve the patron race for 10 thousand years. After that period they are free to pursue their own fate, and uplift their own clients. This pattern repeats itself all across the galaxy, and each race can trace their lineage back to a mysterious race of progenitors that has long since faded from existence. But who uplifted progenitors? Brinn never tackles that question directly, which is strike one against him.

Humans are an exception to the rule. Apparently we have no known patron and our sentience may have evolved naturally. Or the race that uplifted us just abandoned us and left. In either case, this makes humans the only known race in the whole galaxy that reached space flight capability without an aid from an older patron. This is of course a textbook case of Humans are Special trope. Not only that, but out of millions of sentient races we are the only one which does not suffer from Creative Sterility. All the alien technology is stale and static, based largely on the knowledge gathered in the Galactic Library which encompassed all of the collected knowledge of every race that ever existed. Humans seem to be the only race with their own unique take on space flight and uplift. The fact that I’m linking to TV tropes during this review is strike two against Brin.

The story is about the first space ship manned solely by dolphins – the newest sentient race uplifted by humans. It’s crew which includes a rudimentary supervisory human presence and a single sentient chimp, discovers a derelict fleet of alien ships so ancient that they may have been built by alien progenitors. When they transmit this information back to earth the whole galaxy literally explodes into chaos. Every race wants to get their hands on the fleet, and the poor dolphins have to take refuge on an uninhabited sea world as few dozen alien armies battle in its orbit for the exclusive right to interrogate the earthlings about their findings.

Brinn spends the most of his book trying to describe the dolphin culture, worldview and their relationship with humans, chimps and other galactic races. While his prose is competent, I didn’t find it very captivating. He does a decent job fleshing out his characters, but it is all sort of ruined by the cliche situations he puts them in. We have a Mutiny instigated by a pompous, bossy scientist, a Dolphin who gains a Disability Superpower, a dude who is a one man army. The dolphins fly in a Cool Starship that is a relic compared to the alien technology, but somehow performs better under certain conditions, and can also be tweaked to mimic patterns produced by enemy engines to avoid detection. There is also a classic Trojan horse maneuver, and etc..

The book is not bad. I’ve red worse (Cough, Twilight, Cough) but to me it seemed to rely too much on these standard tropes. That, and I just couldn’t get used to the way Brinn described his dolphins. They were a rather cheerful, uncomplicated race loving to sing, jest and struggling to suppress their animal instincts.

Here is the deal: when Dan Simmons made the dolphins talk in Hyperion, they seemed mysterious, aloof, alien and yet so familiar at the same time. It was awesome. Brinn’s dolphins just pale next to that portrayal.

That, and I just couldn’t stand the way Brinn portrayed humans as far superior to any of the older, more advanced alien races. I hate when writers do this and Brinn can’t seem to resist the urge to marvel at how special and unique we are every few pages.

It is an ok read, but I was less than impressed. Needless to say, I’m not going to read any other Uplift books. I’m not a fan.

Now excuse me, while I go browse TV Tropes for the next 4 hours. While I was searching for the tropes above, I managed to open about 80 background tabs, and I have this urge to read all of them now. Curse you TV Tropes. Why must you trap me this way, every time I visit?