The first book of this series was exceptional. The second was fine, and definitely worth reading to find out how the first one ended; it answered basiThe first book of this series was exceptional. The second was fine, and definitely worth reading to find out how the first one ended; it answered basically all of my questions to my satisfaction. The third was tedious; the beginning of the book promised a lot of interesting plot, but then none of it actually happened in that book, which instead spent like 600 pages just describing a repetitive few months of being chased across the galaxy to planet after planet where nothing much happens except action-adventure-y escapes. This book was somewhat better plotwise (it did actually contain all of the action that book 3 hinted at), but it was just too long.
I didn't actually mind that book 3 was about an overly special child (usually my least favorite type of character, but Simmons managed to avoid the tropes that annoy me). I didn't mind that books 3 and 4 blatantly retconned events from books 1 and 2, claiming that they were written by an in-series character who lacked total insight into the events he described (nevermind that books 3 and 4 were also written by an in-series narrator, using the same method of insight that the author of books 1 and 2 used, making his narrative equally unreliable).
What I minded was that the book was just too long. An editor should have cut half of this out. I didn't need 20 pages of the characters taking an unnecessarily dangerous route on a mountain world and barely managing to survive; I didn't need a list of everyone who came with them on various journeys; I didn't need a detailed accounting of every mountain on the mountain planet and which sort of people lived there. There was just a lot of tedium. (I also hated the sex scenes in this book. I don't know why. The sex scenes in the first book were mildly eye-roll-inducing but clearly essential to the plot; the ones in this book could have been elided with a one-sentence allusion to their activities and the book would have been much better for it.)
(view spoiler)[I also get annoyed when books lean into the whole "love is a physical force holding the universe together" thing. From a sci-fi perspective, this book did a better job at it than most, but I cannot help be frustrated that it equated too many things under the heading of "love". The love that binds the universe together is one of empathy borne of a literal telepathic ability to share one another's experiences. This seems very different (and almost in conflict with) the romantic jealousy-laced pair-bond soulmate love between Raul and Aenea, but the book makes it seem like the Raul-Aenea romance plot ties in with the broader message of "love as a physical force".
I'm also just broadly cynical of the (widely used) trope of humans evolving towards more love and empathy, of love being a force that necessarily leads to pacificsm, etc. To me, it simply fails to engage with the inherently violent nature of life, which must feed off other life to survive. In this book they still go hunting even after they've developed the love telepathy thing, and there's very much an implied hierarchical distinction between sentient and nonsentient life forms, only the former of which are subject to the empathy thing, but I find that a facile way to reconcile this contradiction. (hide spoiler)]
(view spoiler)[I also would have liked more info about how the Void which Binds works. It's revealed that all the Core technologies like farcasters are doing irreparable damage to the Void, essentially burning the akashic records as fossil fuel. That's all well and good. But then apparently resurrection is also burning the akashic records as fossil fuel since they need to use the Void as a computer to store every little bit of detail about resurrected people's physical state in order to bring them back intact. But if the akashic records don't already store that level of detail, then what do they store? It's never explained. Some form of dualism is presumably implied but not explored in any detail. And this is used to explain why cruciforms didn't really work in the first two books, bringing people back stupider and sexless; this explanation make sense for the "stupider" part (the cruciform couldn't save the full representation of the person and was reconstructing a compressed version) but why would this make them sexless? Other than this I don't have much to comment on wrt the worldbuilding; it wasn't the kind of worldbuilding which tried to explain everything in perfect detail, and so I didn't subject it to my usual scrutiny. (hide spoiler)]...more
Another excellent novel that spends a lot of time explaining the strategy behind human communications and interactions. Also satisfied my educational Another excellent novel that spends a lot of time explaining the strategy behind human communications and interactions. Also satisfied my educational goal of giving me a more intuitive grasp of what the mafia is like....more
This was my least favorite in the series -- I found it kind of heavy-handed, with too literal a manifestation of the moral message. It was still reallThis was my least favorite in the series -- I found it kind of heavy-handed, with too literal a manifestation of the moral message. It was still really good though! This series is my favorite thing that I've read in a long time....more
This is a story about the evolution of cooperation, about how one sufficiently powerful agent can force a shift from a worse Nash equilibrium to a betThis is a story about the evolution of cooperation, about how one sufficiently powerful agent can force a shift from a worse Nash equilibrium to a better one. It is beautiful. I want to give it 6 stars....more
Up until the last 20% of the book, I was going to give this a 2 star review; I just couldn't get into the plot. It also didn't help that Brandon's wriUp until the last 20% of the book, I was going to give this a 2 star review; I just couldn't get into the plot. It also didn't help that Brandon's writing felt especially clunky after Naomi Novik's, and Hoid's supposedly-clever quips tended to fall flat for me. I also didn't understand the point of the romance; why these two particular people? What did they have in common that made them suited for one another?
But then the last 20% was great, and was what I want out of Cosmere novels, so that bumps it up to 3 stars....more
Loading...
