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frasersimons
3/5
It definitely reminded me of Neuromancer. It uses a lot of new terminology (and thankfully has an index at the end of the book), it often describes technology with organic terms and vice versa. It's written as though it's keeping in mind it could be a screenplay to an action movie but isn't dumbed down. I was not into the fact that the main character was schizophrenic, even though it's a pretty big (old) cyberpunk trope. And I lean more towards post-cyberpunk tropes and themes. I don't know how accurate that depiction is but it felt like it was only invoked when the imagery was cool.
Paul Sheffield, The inventor of the CLOUD technology—that's swept Los Angeles' rich and willing into the noosphere—has lived in exile for a decade, north of the mountains, feared, defamed, and despised by his former colleagues and estranged family. When he learns that the same technology that led to his downfall now threatens his family as well as the thousands synchronized to it, he must take action. Nothing is what it seems, especially with his psychoses turning allies to enemies, and enemies into demons.
I found it well written and a fun ride, with some commentary on humanity integrating into the CLOUD and extrapolating a few other technologies being hinted at these days. Intuiting instructions to our devices (which I imagined to be something like Minority Report tech), western culture's addiction to medication. Lots of stuff.
"He is an electric ghost painted in the colours of a dead moment.”
It does still play out like an action movie though, with the ending telegraphed from the very beginning, which isn't unenjoyable but I was hoping for a bit more out a twist. There's some good quotes, everything is in line with the themes. It's not bad, I would have given it 4 stars... but the constant switching between 2nd and 3rd perspectives makes for a lot of Paul does, and Paul sees, and Paul Paul Paul. It did grate on me at some points while being seamless in others.
“These vertical suburbs--jet black glass structures in matte-grey iron and titanium corsets.--boast their own mayors and their own municipal services. They flicker with illegally-rerouted power and pirated water--pumped up external piping from the Toronto Syndicate's aquifers in San Jaquin.”
It definitely reminded me of Neuromancer. It uses a lot of new terminology (and thankfully has an index at the end of the book), it often describes technology with organic terms and vice versa. It's written as though it's keeping in mind it could be a screenplay to an action movie but isn't dumbed down. I was not into the fact that the main character was schizophrenic, even though it's a pretty big (old) cyberpunk trope. And I lean more towards post-cyberpunk tropes and themes. I don't know how accurate that depiction is but it felt like it was only invoked when the imagery was cool.
Paul Sheffield, The inventor of the CLOUD technology—that's swept Los Angeles' rich and willing into the noosphere—has lived in exile for a decade, north of the mountains, feared, defamed, and despised by his former colleagues and estranged family. When he learns that the same technology that led to his downfall now threatens his family as well as the thousands synchronized to it, he must take action. Nothing is what it seems, especially with his psychoses turning allies to enemies, and enemies into demons.
I found it well written and a fun ride, with some commentary on humanity integrating into the CLOUD and extrapolating a few other technologies being hinted at these days. Intuiting instructions to our devices (which I imagined to be something like Minority Report tech), western culture's addiction to medication. Lots of stuff.
"He is an electric ghost painted in the colours of a dead moment.”
It does still play out like an action movie though, with the ending telegraphed from the very beginning, which isn't unenjoyable but I was hoping for a bit more out a twist. There's some good quotes, everything is in line with the themes. It's not bad, I would have given it 4 stars... but the constant switching between 2nd and 3rd perspectives makes for a lot of Paul does, and Paul sees, and Paul Paul Paul. It did grate on me at some points while being seamless in others.
“These vertical suburbs--jet black glass structures in matte-grey iron and titanium corsets.--boast their own mayors and their own municipal services. They flicker with illegally-rerouted power and pirated water--pumped up external piping from the Toronto Syndicate's aquifers in San Jaquin.”
The format continues to plague the volumes. Changing up the artists doesn’t help much either. But there were a few issues that were spectacular that are inbetween the intro to The Family Man storyline. Neil Gaiman and Morrison’s issues were awesome—then the main storyline comes back and feels overlong and disjointed. Then two more random stories, one of which was great the final issue being dull again.
This would have been a 5 star book for me if not for a few things. First, what I liked/appreciated: the writing itself was good, not baroque not too formal, it was well balanced. It was felt very knowledgeable and researched, particularly for battles, strategies, and things about ships, their navigation and operations, and the hazards that happen on a voyage. The worlds factions were interesting so I didn’t mind the epic fantasy hopping around all the time. There were some particularly great insights into characters that I found very poignant. The holy war that makes the overall zoomed out plot feel like it’s in motion did its job.
What I didn’t like, and some of this is might be somewhat spoilery: It feels like edgy dark fantasy in that the major blind side with books like this seem to always be women. They just aren’t well written, when touched on at all in this case. Literally every woman was raped. One of the characters only appeared in the fiction at all, at one point an entire chapter dedicated to her (and then never devoted to her again) about her being raped repeatedly, then appears later as a diversion to another character who’s made her into a concubine. Of the three women, all of them are sex objects and not empowered in any way whatsoever. This is the first book of five so it might be a setup for them to become empowered but no other character has to experience disempowerment like that, so who’s to say?
There’s some fairly heavy homophobia that’s not treated well and also used to disempower, which was annoying and tropey for a sea voyage.
The amount of granular detail devoted to some aspects will be great for some people but I’m not that into that for battles and what not. I did enjoy it for the voyage on the boat though. But generally, it’s not something I look for.
What I didn’t like, and some of this is might be somewhat spoilery: It feels like edgy dark fantasy in that the major blind side with books like this seem to always be women. They just aren’t well written, when touched on at all in this case. Literally every woman was raped. One of the characters only appeared in the fiction at all, at one point an entire chapter dedicated to her (and then never devoted to her again) about her being raped repeatedly, then appears later as a diversion to another character who’s made her into a concubine. Of the three women, all of them are sex objects and not empowered in any way whatsoever. This is the first book of five so it might be a setup for them to become empowered but no other character has to experience disempowerment like that, so who’s to say?
There’s some fairly heavy homophobia that’s not treated well and also used to disempower, which was annoying and tropey for a sea voyage.
The amount of granular detail devoted to some aspects will be great for some people but I’m not that into that for battles and what not. I did enjoy it for the voyage on the boat though. But generally, it’s not something I look for.