Book review: Gridlinked

By Neal Asher. Bought from Oxfam (along with Hull Zero Three) and read fairly quickly over the weekend. Goodreads says "Gridlinked is a science fiction adventure in the classic, fast-paced, action-packed tradition of Harry Harrison and Poul Anderson, with a dash of cyberpunk and a splash of Ian Fleming added to spice the mix. Cormac is a legendary Earth Central Security agent, the James Bond of a wealthy future" and yeah its rather like that.

There are two main problems with the book (I mean plot-type problems; I'm discounting writing style and so on). The first is the elevation of a minor local gangster / seperatist into a major villain because he owns an Awesome Killer Robot that is implausibly invulnerable and invicible (until it becomes inconvenient and is suddenly vinced). And which for unclear reasons he wasn't using before. The "invulnerable bad guy" trope is annoying; Mrs Coulter is that in The Subtle Knife. The second is that this is really two plots, intwined as far as the author can force them, but really they don't link at all. Plot one is the revenge of the alluded-to ganster; two and more interesting is the extra-galactic influence of Strange Beings.

The good thing about the dual-plot, though, is that he gets through at least half, and possibly two thirds, of the book before plot two gets explored in any kind of detail and we discover that it isn't very well constructed or thought out.

I should give him credit for one political thing: in this, the over-arching political entity really is benign; and the local separatists really are little more than gangsters; local bigwigs who would like relatively more of the pie than their neighbours.

Oh, and reading some of the Goodreads reviews: I thought the characters were better drawn than they get credit for. Stanton is quite likeable, as a bad-guy slowly realising he has chosen the wrong side. Cormac keeps wrestling with his total lack of empathy. Pelter is a caricature of a fanatic, but who again has brief flashes of self-awareness. And so on.

Book review: Hull Zero Three

When even Goodreads only gives it three stars you know you're in for a clunker. But this is Greg "Blood Music / Forge of God" Bear, so I knew that anyway. And being honest, the middle third or so is a reasonable page-turner. But...

The book is a traditional "waking up on a generation starship and having to work out what has gone wrong" kind of thing. One nice feature of the writing - or possibly a flaw that becomes a good feature - is that what is there is described in terms of what is seen, without the layer of interpretation that our minds usually put onto things, thus neatly flowing with the lack of knowledge of The Protagonist. On the other hand it rapidly becomes clear that none of it matters, for similar reasons, so I found myself skipping forwards in the early parts looking for something to happen.

Eventually things do happen, and Our Heroes get chased from one hull to the next. At some point his editor tells him "Greg, no-one has any idea what this starship you're mis-describing looks like" so TP serendipitously finds a rough drawing of the ship.

About three quarters of the way through Our Author realises that (a) he's run out of hulls and (b) the book has to end somehow, so he rapidly pulls us into an implausible conclusion (which has the possibility of some quasi-interesting moral questions, but since those questions are all in the past they lose their force) and we're done, whew.

There are major plot problems around celestial dynamics: this ship has nominally been accelerating outwards for centuries (the book is tolerably vague on this point), turned round and decelerated, but somehow changed course. This isn't really plausible. Nor is the "whoops, supernova" plotline. It all gives the impression of "keep writing it will make sense eventually oh dear it doesn't".

I could complain more: the arbitrary unexplained heating / cooling; spin up / down (and also I'm pretty sure his physics is wrong there; he's thinking of spin == gravity but of course it isn't); the arbitrary damage; even the simple improbability of making so large a ship when it clearly isn't required; but that would be pointless.

One last thing: is this ship unique, or one of many? If unique, why is it going so far; there are many nearer targets; also, it seems too technologically perfect to be a one-off. If one of many... well, you might expect some learning-from-experience.