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Lockstep

2014-07-10 00:00

Cover for Lockstep

Review:

Ev­ery once in a while some­one comes up with an idea and you slap your fore­head be­cause it feels ob­vi­ous in ret­ro­spec­t. Lock­step is one of those.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, in SF, if FTL trav­el is im­pos­si­ble, but sta­sis is pos­si­ble, easy, and cheap, you get in­ter­stel­lar trav­el that's a one-way trip. Lock­step adds "why not hi­ber­nate EV­ERY­ONE so they wait for trav­eller­s?".

And once you have that idea, you get "fake FTL". But that al­so brings up the ques­tion of how long is it a good idea to hi­ber­nate. And once there is a large net­work of worlds hi­ber­nat­ing in lock­step, does it make eco­nom­ic sense to hi­ber­nate less than them? Or more? How about re­source ac­cu­mu­la­tion on hi­ber­na­tion? How about en­forc­ing lock­step? And so on, and this book ex­plores a lot of that.

So, the world build­ing is awe­some, plus it's orig­i­nal! The plot it­self is sort of a throw­away.

Spell or High Water (Magic 2.0, #2)

2014-07-01 00:00

Cover for Spell or High Water (Magic 2.0, #2)

Review:

Yes, white-­cis-geek wish ful­fill­ment fan­ta­sy yad­da yad­da yad­da.

It still is fun­ny, in­ter­est­ing, and a quick, en­ter­tain­ing read. Look­ing for­ward to the 3rd book if it ev­er hap­pen­s.

Tran (Janissaries, #2-3)

2014-06-28 00:00

Cover for Tran (Janissaries, #2-3)

Review:

Pulpy just like Janis­saries, the 1st one in the se­ries. And then I read these (it's an om­nibus with the sec­ond and third books in the se­ries) and it turns out there's a mas­sive 4th book that has been post­poned al­most 20 years. So... boo.

I un­der­stand *why* Pour­nelle has not fin­ished it, it's just that I hate un­fin­ished se­ries, and this is not ex­act­ly ASOIAF ... Pour­nelle has been crazy pro­l­li­fic, he just nev­er fin­ished writ­ing this one book to close the se­ries.
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