By: Elizabeth Bear Publisher: Spectra Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Spectra Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 416 Publication Date: November 29, 2005 Release Date: November 29, 2005
Product Description: Give Canada’s Master Warrant Officer Jenny Casey an inch and she’ll take a galaxy. That’s just the kind of person a world on the brink of destruction needs. The year is 2063, and Earth has been brutalized. An asteroid flung at Toronto by the PanChinese government has killed tens of millions and left the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in its wake. Humanity must find another option....
Perched above the devastation in the starship Montreal, Jenny is still in the thick of the fray. Plugged into the worldwire, connected to a brilliant AI, her mind can be everywhere and anywhere at once. But it’s focused on the mysterious alien beings right outside her ship. Are they there to help–or destroy? With Earth a breeding ground for treason and betrayal as governments struggle to assign blame, Jenny holds the fate of humankind in her artificially reconstructed hand....
Took me 6 months to read I'm one of those people who usually finish a book, no matter how painfully boring. This book tested that theory. Granted, I will note here that this is the first book I'm reading in the series, and perhaps that contributed to the lack of interest I had in the characters. They all seemed the same to me. The action scene near the end was pretty good, (hence 2 stars) but I found the book only slightly more interesting than that Era-crap (to which I had to resort to coffee and mandatory pages-read a day in order to finish).
Jenny is an interesting enough character, but all the other characters seemed like little wooden miniatures. Again, if you've read the other two books and know more about the series as a whole, you may like this book. Definitely not one of those series you can enjoy from any point.
The writing style didn't impress me, but it wasn't too painful. Dry but with hints of flavor.
Not Free SF Reader Big rock blast sacrifice aftermath.
In the wake of a large object being dropped on Canada from a very great height, the problems of the planet still remain, evne with the sacrifice of one of Jenny's pilot proteges to help ameliorate the damage. Space exploration is still vital, and Jenny Casey is considering her own expedition given her current position and materiel.
Luckily for the meat-based population of the planet, Richard Feynman is happy to use his basically now planet-sized brain resources to help with the rebuilding effort on the surface of the planet.
Political enemies who want things to stay as they are would really like to stop any successes Casey and her allies might be able to manage. Not all of them are human.
Again, a book that is tricky to sum up in a phrase, and well worth a look. It is perhaps even a bit better than the last two.
Lost! I have not read the other books in this trilogy - in fact I only learned it was a trilogy by checking the reviews here on Amazon.
The book starts out in the middle of a thought, then before finishing the first one, proceeds to drop us smack in the middle of many other thoughts and conversations. Not nearly enough context is provided, so the reader is left trying to peice clues together, trying to decide whether there's anything here worth getting involved in.
I couldn't make the jump. After 64 pages, I have given up. In fairness to the author, I'll look for a copy of Hammered - maybe it works better if you start at the beginning.
Smashing conclusion to trilogy "Worldwired" goes off, yet again in new direction. The three-part saga that in the author's "Hammered" seemed to be establishing itself as a cyberpunky "band of outlaws up against globalism and the corporations," but turned into an international thriller cum space opera in "Scardown," now adds a first-contact puzzle thread to the proceedings. (And a spectacular scene at the United Nations.)
This time out Jenny Casey takes more of a supporting role (although she gets plenty of action) as Richard, the super-intelligent artificial intelligence, moves front and center here. Certainly, he is the one who keeps all the plotlines together. But Jenny herself gets plenty of chapters in which to tell her part of the story in her wisecracky first-person-present style.
The author brings back the characters who survived the first two tales, and tosses in a few more (she puts a few of the returnees essentially on hold for a while, but do not fret, because she plugs them in when they're needed again), and once again uses her jagged multiple pov style. There's plenty of action here, but you have to resist the temptation to gobble down the pages, because if you do, you won't have the time to relish Ms. Bear's fine-honed prose style.
I hope that Ms. Bear will return to this "universe" she's created, although advertisements at the back of the book would seem to indicate that in her next novel she intends to go in another direction. No matter. I'll travel that road with her.
A fine wrap up The end of the trilogy is by far the best book of the series, in contrast to most multi book novels, which typically start strong, and limp to an end. Not that the first two books are at all weak. The first book "Hammered" is very strong, with many absorbing characters, but the second, "Scarsdown" is, perhaps due to the extigicies of editing, a little compacted for easy reading. This work could easily have been expanded to four books, but that's the publisher's decision, not Ms. Bear's
Totally worthwhile and expansive read, with quite a bit of moral and social commentary between the lines. A very dense but readable debut into Scienece Fiction, and i cant wait for her next work. Anybody who thinks SF is not a mature field is urged to read Elizabeth Bear.
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