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What's New
Review Features
S - Science Fiction
F - Fantasy
H - Horror
Complete Listing
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Adams, Douglas (S)
Asher, Neal (S)
Aylett, Steve (S)
Banks, Iain M (S)
Barclay, James (F)
Barker, Clive (H)
Baxter, Stephen (S)
Brin, David (S)
Bury, Stephen (S)
Card, Orson Scott (S)
Cherryh, CJ (S/F)
Clute, John (S)
Cockayne, Steve (F)
Cook, Glen (F)
Danielewski, Mark (H)
Dick, Philip K (S)
Egan, Greg (S)
Feist, Raymond (F)
Gaiman, Neil (F)
Gibson, William (S)
Goodkind, Terry (F)
Grimwood, Jon C (S)
Hamilton, Peter (S)
Jeter, K.W. (S)
Jordan, Robert (F)
Lethem, Jonathan (S)
McAuley, Paul (S)
MacLeod, Ken (S)
Martin, George RR (F)
McMullen, Sean (S)
Miéville, China (S)
Moran, Daniel K (S)
Morgan, Richard K (S)
Nagata, Linda (S)
Niven, Larry (S)
Noon, Jeff (S)
Robinson, Kim S. (S)
Rucker, Rudy (S)
Simmons, Dan (S)
Smith, Michael Marshall (S)
Stephenson, Neal (S)
Sterling, Bruce (S)
Vinge, Vernor (S)
Westerfeld, Scott (S)
Williams, Sean (S)
Williams, Tad (S/F)
Collections (S/F)
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| The Classics |
Bradbury, Ray (S/H)
Burgess, Anthony (S)
Tolkien, JRR (F) |
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| Sean McMullen |
| Author Information |
Reviewed Books |
Other Books |
Notes: (M) - Moonworld Series
Notes: (C) - Call to the Edge Series
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Souls in
the Great Machine (C) |
Voyage of the Shadow Moon (M)
Mirrorsun Rising
The Centurion's Empire
The Miocene Arrow (C)
Eyes of the Calculor (C) |
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 Our
Ranking I picked this one up after following
a few "this book was also bought by" links at Amazon.com and after reading the
reviews there was intrigued enough to pick it up. This has basically become my
equivalent of sitting in a bookstore and reading the back cover of books to try
and find some new authors. What is amazing, is that for the most part, Amazon
is right. I'd say about 75% of the books I buy this way turn out to be solid picks.
Unfortunately, this one fell into the other 25% block. It's a shame too, because
the book started off on the right foot. Basically, the tale is set in a post apocalyptic
Australia, where after some disaster that is not clear to the characters, technology
has been set back to almost the 17th century level. Pistols are now the basic
weapon of choice, and long distance communication is carried out by a crude "beam
flash" network scattered throughout the land. Meanwhile, one of the main characters,
Zarvora has created a machine called the "Calculator" that is decades ahead of
its time. This device will revolutionize the technology and even the politics
of the time and wind up completely changing the world as it was once known. Throughout
the book, McMullen actually has some very wild ideas. The Calculator itself and
how it works and even evolves throughout the story is very interesting. Even some
of the more everyday stuff like the beamflash and even the culture of the various
city states shows a lot of thought and planning on McMullen's part. Probably the
most interesting aspect is what is knows as simply "The Call". The Call is this
mysterious force that passes over the land in waves, almost like a storm front.
Where ever it goes, it turns all mammals into a kind of lemming, overriding all
of their free thoughts and compelling them to just start walking in a direction.
Even if this means walking over a cliff or into a river to drown, once caught
in this, you are trapped. McMullen comes up with an entire world that has evolved
around trying to survive these waves. The ideas he has around it are fascinating
and some of the ideas to survive this are very imaginative. Unfortunately, McMullen
couldn't keep the same level of intrigue around the characters and plot. The characters
and their interactions are really the downfall of an otherwise good story. They
are very shallow and are what I consider cookie cutter kind of people, all with
one dominant trait that rules them. No character has a complex mix of emotions,
drives or ambitions. To make it worse, they act completely irrationally. The concept
of love in this book is a main focus, which is a shame because it winds up to
be fairly warped. Characters fall sickenly in love at the drop of a dime, marching
off to conquer entire nations to find someone they have seen once, or forgive
decades of servitude for someone they just met. Normally, I can sort of ignore
this in a lot of books and move on. The problem is, McMullen actually makes it
into part of the plot so it is everywhere so there is no way to avoid it.
Without the weak characterization this would have been a good read. However, it
just grows so tiresome, that it became nearly impossible to finish the book. It
is a shame since the rest of the book was pretty strong. There is a sequel to
this that supposedly improves quite a bit on the characters. I might give it a
try and hope McMullen corrects the one (a huge one mind you) weakness in his book.
But it'll be a while before I do I think. |
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