16 March, 2006
(0 ) 00:53 Finished Sunstorm (by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter), a book I borrowed last Friday. It isn't as bad as the reviews at Amazon will have you think it is, actually, although the first book, Time's Eye, far surpasses it.
Of course there's the science, which is perhaps the only area in which Sunstorm triumphs over its predecessor. However what was SEVERELY lacking was characterisation. I mean, there were so many characters who could have been further explored. I mean, I found Eugene, the Einstein of the book, to be exceptionally interesting, especially with his withdrawn personality and somewhat autistic behaviour, but other than telling readers that he used to be a farmboy when he was younger, we readers know almost nothing else about him. I want to know, I want to care, but the authors didn't give me the opportunity to. There's also Mikhail, the gay scientist who is in charge of studying the solar weather. His character was quite promising in the beginning, but he was quickly abandoned as the story progressed, after which the focus seemed to switch to Siobhan, who didn't impress me at all. In fact I found her rather dry. For some reason, I found the romance between Siobhan and Bud to be rather annoying.
What I found very unsatisfying was how there were only the briefest mentions of Mir, the fantastic patchwork of time which the Firstborn apparently engineered, where different bits of the earth at different eras became melded together, throwing peacekeeping troops from 2037 with 19th century English colonists from India. We even got to meet Rudyard Kipling, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Babylon. Like, how can you surpass such dramatics? Instead, Sunstorm revolved around the post-modern world, which I found to be "duh" a lot of the time. Okay, you have all these A.I.s running around, and supersmart cars and dishwashers and alarm clocks. Okay. And then there came the surfeit of females in power. Yeah yeah, we know, in the enlightened society of tomorrow, there is no more discrimination and women have equal rights, blah blah, but the Astronomer Royal (sort of like, a spokesperson for astronomers? actually I'm not sure myself...), Eurasian Prime Minister, American President (for some reason I always get the American and Eurasia PMs mixed up, as well as their posts... as it is, I'm not if she was a president or a prime minister or god-knows-what) and Australian President (PM?) were all female. And the Australian one was aboriginal, to boot. Okay, we get the politics. Lay it off a bit, will you?
Hmm it seems that I did more criticising than anything, even though I said the book wasn't bad. It truly isn't, but while I bought Time's Eye, I don't think I'll buy Sunstorm. It isn't worth my money. Hmm. The good stuff about Sunstorm? Well, it didn't bore me. The action was quite fast-paced, which made me want to read on to find out what happened, despite not caring much about the characters. Okay, we've established that I'm a sadistic person. I like reading about Armageddon, okay? Heh. But no, Earth didn't get vaporised or anything.
I guess everyone's being so critical of The Time Odyssey (that's the name of the series) because these two authors are at the top of their game. I've read their other books, Clarke's Odyssey series and many of his short stories, as well as one or two Baxter novels, and found them engaging and exciting. Their collaboration seems to have toned them down a bit though.
If it's saying anything at all, I think Alastair Reynold's Century Rain was better. And I didn't like or hate that one.
Of course there's the science, which is perhaps the only area in which Sunstorm triumphs over its predecessor. However what was SEVERELY lacking was characterisation. I mean, there were so many characters who could have been further explored. I mean, I found Eugene, the Einstein of the book, to be exceptionally interesting, especially with his withdrawn personality and somewhat autistic behaviour, but other than telling readers that he used to be a farmboy when he was younger, we readers know almost nothing else about him. I want to know, I want to care, but the authors didn't give me the opportunity to. There's also Mikhail, the gay scientist who is in charge of studying the solar weather. His character was quite promising in the beginning, but he was quickly abandoned as the story progressed, after which the focus seemed to switch to Siobhan, who didn't impress me at all. In fact I found her rather dry. For some reason, I found the romance between Siobhan and Bud to be rather annoying.
What I found very unsatisfying was how there were only the briefest mentions of Mir, the fantastic patchwork of time which the Firstborn apparently engineered, where different bits of the earth at different eras became melded together, throwing peacekeeping troops from 2037 with 19th century English colonists from India. We even got to meet Rudyard Kipling, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Babylon. Like, how can you surpass such dramatics? Instead, Sunstorm revolved around the post-modern world, which I found to be "duh" a lot of the time. Okay, you have all these A.I.s running around, and supersmart cars and dishwashers and alarm clocks. Okay. And then there came the surfeit of females in power. Yeah yeah, we know, in the enlightened society of tomorrow, there is no more discrimination and women have equal rights, blah blah, but the Astronomer Royal (sort of like, a spokesperson for astronomers? actually I'm not sure myself...), Eurasian Prime Minister, American President (for some reason I always get the American and Eurasia PMs mixed up, as well as their posts... as it is, I'm not if she was a president or a prime minister or god-knows-what) and Australian President (PM?) were all female. And the Australian one was aboriginal, to boot. Okay, we get the politics. Lay it off a bit, will you?
Hmm it seems that I did more criticising than anything, even though I said the book wasn't bad. It truly isn't, but while I bought Time's Eye, I don't think I'll buy Sunstorm. It isn't worth my money. Hmm. The good stuff about Sunstorm? Well, it didn't bore me. The action was quite fast-paced, which made me want to read on to find out what happened, despite not caring much about the characters. Okay, we've established that I'm a sadistic person. I like reading about Armageddon, okay? Heh. But no, Earth didn't get vaporised or anything.
I guess everyone's being so critical of The Time Odyssey (that's the name of the series) because these two authors are at the top of their game. I've read their other books, Clarke's Odyssey series and many of his short stories, as well as one or two Baxter novels, and found them engaging and exciting. Their collaboration seems to have toned them down a bit though.
If it's saying anything at all, I think Alastair Reynold's Century Rain was better. And I didn't like or hate that one.