Reviews and Comments

This book gets an extra star for being darker than I expected. I appreciated the moral and emotional ambiguity, even if the characters were kind of annoying, and the plot was a little weak. I also liked how the actions of the main character through a large portion of the book don't really matter. The war doesn't turn on a last-ditch mission.

Tedious.

This interleaves scenes from San Francisco just after the first Dotcom boom with episodes from the main character's childhood as a geek. Does a good job of capturing the feeling of both.

Fun, not too heavy. Nice to see That Idiot Ivan from his own perspective.

Slow going, at first, but it eventually gets moving. Some interesting ideas.

Is the Culture all grown up?

I was hoping this would be better. Some of the fantastic bits about Barsoom were interesting, but there was very little follow through. The characters are generally pretty flat.