May 14! Spiders!
Finally started reading the book yesterday. I’m 22% of the way through so far. Based on several of his descriptions and action sequences, the author must be a hardcore gamer.
Adrian does tabletop and live-action roleplay. I don’t know about other sorts of gaming. His first series was based on a tabletop campaign he wrote.
rho21 help us a bit as we wait for the sequel of one of the best modern sci fi novels in almost 8 years. How do you know that?
I think most of that information is in the bios at the end of his books or on his website. But as it happens, he’s an acquaintance of my wife in real life: she plays some of the same larp.
Other information about Adrian (that I know is available on the internet): he gave up his job as a lawyer towards the end of last year to work full time as an author. I was already pretty impressed at the speed he was writing, but perhaps he’ll start churning out books at the rate of Brandon Sanderson.
Time to put the book down. I’m halfway through reliving human history through a bunch of stupid bugs, and I’m just bored. You know what would be cool in a science fiction book? Anything but a history lesson using spiders as props.
And don’t even get me started on the human half the story, total garbage. So I’m just going to stop here and write my own ending: the ship explodes because people are fucking idiots and everybody fucking dies.
Huh. Well, have a nice day!
Clearly, Kerzain is an ant, which is the only logical explanation for why he didn’t like the book.
I loved the book. I’ve talked with people who didn’t enjoy the first half, but enjoyed the second part.
Don’t knock ants, they’re in some of my favorite parts of the book!
I’m in the boat that thinks the book is boring before the spider story really gets going. But that’s only about a 1/4 of the book, IIRC. Taken as a whole, it’s up there with a Deepness in the Sky or a Fire in the Deep or Brin’s better Uplift novels for me in terms of sci-fi that explores truly non-human thought and society.
I don’t remember this part of the book. I’m pretty sure that the spiders’ cultural development was idiosyncratic to spider biology.
Kerzain-- please reconsider – that is some righteous hard core sci fi there.
Steps you just mentioned a top 3 of my top – uh - 7 or so -sci fi novels. Try to include mote in gods eye in your next post,
Mote is indeed a classic of the genre. It’s been a while since I read it, though—did it have narrative from the perspective of the Moties or just the humans?
I’ve been thinking about this since I finished it a couple weeks ago. At first I felt that the ending was optimistic because look they’re all getting along. But really it’s incredibly pessimistic. The humans, left to their own devices, resort to the same tribalistic and inherently aggressive life that led them to blow up their planet in the first place. The only way out is literally genetic engineering, or to be another species (the spiders). To me this seems a reductive and deeply unpleasant view of humanity. To be fair, the nature of the generation ship and the Key Crew and the desperation that must have existed prior to launch have to be taken into account, but still.
I always appreciate books that linger in my hindbrain for mulling long after reading, and this has been one of them.
Step you know – I thought I DO recall a motie narrative (I almost feel bad for calling them that)… it has been years… but mostly it from the point of view of a human protagonist. I think I may re-read after I finish “Tiamat’s Wrath” (part …uh… 8? of the expanse books) (which is good but a bit drawn out…).
So this is pretty good, I take it? Sort of grand sweep/Arthur C Clarke/Asimov type stuff?
Is the whole trilogy worth reading?
Book 2 is good. Book 3, I hear, is not.