The Star Fraction

The Fall Revolution #1

by Ken MacLeod

Britain is in the 21st century, and Moh Kohn works for one of the security mercenary firms. He is unaware that, deep in his brain, he holds the key to information which could change the entire world.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Politics, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

468 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1995

About the author

Ken MacLeod is an award-winning Scottish science fiction writer.

His novels have won the Prometheus Award and the BSFA award, and been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives near Edinburgh, Scotland.

MacLeod graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology and has worked as a computer programmer and written a masters thesis on biomechanics.

His novels often explore socialist, communist and anarchist political ideas, most particularly the variants of Trotskyism and anarcho-capitalism or extreme economic libertarianism.

Technical themes encompass singularities, divergent human cultural evolution and post-human cyborg-resurrection.

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just one of my favourite books ever. Cracking UK-based future politico-punk, complete with left-libertarian communes and AI inception in a Balkanised Britain. Superb.

[Tom Nixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might be overdosing on Ken Macleod by this point in the summer but it's such a good feeling. And with The Star Fraction, you arrive at his first novel and the start of his Fall Revolution sequence. Set in a balkanized Britain of the mid-21st century, The Star Fraction tells the story of security mercenary Moh Kohn who along with scientist Janis Taine is fleeing the US/UN's technology cops. Jordan Brown is a teenage atheist in the Christian fundamentalist of Beulah City that wants out.

Macleod's 21st Century is one where the US/UN have control of space and are the arbiters of the entire planet. Britain is a broken country after the end of the Third World War, when the United Republic was overthrown, the Kingdom restored and a patchwork of free states set up across Northern London. Janis Taine is a scientist experimenting with memory enhancing drugs that accidentally releases the Artificial Intelligence that some fear and some are waiting for, The Watchmaker. And The Watchmaker has plans-- plans that will change the lives of Moh, Janis and Jordan as the betrayed revolution of the past comes back to haunt the present day.

(And for the rest, kids, you'll have to read the book to find out.)

Macleod makes a fine debut with this novel. He includes in a short introduction explaining his novels and sneaks in a money quote that underlines his entire body of work with the Fall Revolution sequence: "What is capitalism is unstable and socialism impossible?" I love this notion! I love the way Macleod explores it throughout the novel but there's a certain cynical truth to the idea when applied to the real world. Ideologies war with each other everyday, people die for ideologies and at no point do we ever wonder, what if we just said 'no more new world orders.'

The Star Fraction explores these ideas and more. The Balkanized Britain of Macleod's world is believable and exciting: a United Republic overthrown and driven back to the Highlands of Scotland to carry on the struggle against a restored Kingdom or 'Hanoverian Regime.' (I love that he refers to it that way- it dates back to the overthrow of the Stuart Monarchs in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 followed by the Hanoverian succession of 1701.) Macleod refers to the Republic as a 'radial Democratic regime' which sounds interesting and a lot nicer than usual ideas about Republicanism most of which involved aping the American model.

I would have liked to know more about the America of this world. The critical juncture of the novel sees America going on strike from coast to coast which is a nice idea to think about but one that I couldn't conceive of in today's America.

The usual concepts of the Singularity and futurism are in fine form here- and only goes to reinforce the plaudits that Macleod has duly earned. This guy is writing revolutionary, thought-provoking science fiction and if science fiction isn't your thing and books that make you think are, then you've come to the right place.

Overall: I did this all backwards but reading this series last to first saved the best for last. This is a must-read for any true devotee of science fiction and if anyone's looking for a thought-provoking dystopian read this is the best place to start.

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been trying to read this for a couple of years, and this was my third and last attempt. The first problem the first time around was that it wasn't what I'd expected (having been recommended by Iain M. Banks I was expecting something more operatic). The second time through I just couldn't commit. This time around those first two problems held, and then my inability to engage with any characters (I made it halfway this time, so had more time to get to know them) killed it for me. There was nothing to care about and no one to care about. At least for me. Kind of bummed, actually. I've heard such great things about Macleod. Not for me, I guess.

[Amaha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I seek out genuinely "left" sci-fi and fantasy (Iain Banks, Octavia Butler, Ursula LeGuin, etc.) and this one was on China Mieville's list of "Fifty Fantasy & Sci-Fi Works that Socialists Should Read". But Star Fraction is much more political than believable. It reads in parts like the wet dream of a left-newspaper seller, with obscure Socialist splinter groups (the "Last International") occupying key positions in world history. There's little or no explanation of how these tendencies, currently so marginal on the world stage, become hegemonic. It's just taken as a given.

Some of the politics are frankly mystifying from a contemporary perspective: as an industrial Marxist of the pre-climate change era, Macleod depicts enviromentalists as anti-progress "barbarians", against whom the working class allies with the capitalists. He actually refers to enviros as "green slime"! Ok, some leeway given for being dated, but Star Fraction was only written in 1996.

The final insult: the book is riddled with Marxist puns and in-jokes which, even when you get them, aren't particularly funny.

It's not all bad. In parts Star Fraction is an enjoyable cyberpunk-meets-Billy-Bragg adventure. Where Macleod's vision of history is darker and less tinted by red-colored glasses, it's also more believable: e.g., his speculations on how nation-states fall apart and get partly reconstituted, or how ideologically-oriented, quasi-autonomous enclaves, like the Christian fundamentalist community and the gay ghetto (patrolled by uniformed "Rough Traders") emerge from the wreckage of the State. And later in the book, when the exposition tails off and the storytelling picks up, you find yourself actually enjoying it as a narrative.

I may give Macleod another chance, and try some of his later works. But if you want a much better written, more believable, more humane novel about socialism in the near future, read China Mountain Zhang.

[Forrest · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Star Fraction is an extremely divisive novel. Partly by design and partly by subject matter. Any book that delves so deeply into the grit and grime of political and economic ideologies is going to be uncomfortable for some of its readers. With that as a given, MacLeod goes and shoots himself in the foot by avoiding picking a side in the end, leaving leftists unfulfilled and members of the right just horribly angry.

If this review does happen to inspire you to read this, I highly encourage seeking out the American Edition of Fractions, the collected version of the first two novels in the Fall Revolution. MacLeod added a brief but valuable forward which sets the stage for the events of the novel a little more clearly, and provides those of us who didn’t experience the communist and socialist movements, first hand, a few key pieces of insight. It’s not completely necessary, but I wouldn’t have been able to craft this review without going over the forward again.

The story is set in a somewhat dystopic England where a series of failed revolutions, both local and abroad, brought the might of the US/UN alliance down on the world. As a method of compromise, the US/UN balkanized the world, allowing political dissidents and idealists to create their own communes and compounds which they could rule as they saw fit within a few constraints, such as development of specified technologies and laws regarding use of standing forces. Moh Kohn, the book’s protagonist, is a mercenary who provides security from a verity of legal terrorist groups that operate out of the communes. The one exception to the US/UN lockdown is the city of North London Town, or Norlonto, which exists as an independent outpost of the Space Faction, who made themselves neutral arbiters of international security in the wake of World War Three.

Moh Kohn and Janis Taine find themselves on everyone’s bad side when Janis’ research runs up against the US/UN technology laws and inadvertently triggers the emergence of a Watchmaker sentient AI. As the various active factions take advantage of the chaos to advance their own agendas, Kohn starts to realize that the revolution may not have been all it was cracked up to be.

The unsatisfying thing about The Star Fraction is that it ultimately doesn’t pick a side. The protagonists seem to be trending left/communist for most of the book, but well before the ending salvos all but Janis seem to have abandoned their preconceptions and their causes. MacLeod addresses some of the thoughts that got him there:

“Unfortunately, there’s no reason why the Economic Calculation Argument and the Materialist Conception of History couldn’t both be true. What if capitalism is unstable, and socialism is impossible? The Star Fraction is haunted by this uncomfortable question.”

He is referring to the theories of Ludwig von Mises and Lewis Henry Morgan respectively. Mises held that without a concept of value derived from the construct of property, trade and civilization would prove to be impossible. Morgan drew on Marx’s works and formalized the evolution of a society that couldn’t help but grow beyond the idea of personal property. The Star Fraction is a reaction to the perceived inevitable failure of both schools, from the viewpoint of a socialist, and as such, abandons both the Left and the Right.

Philosophy aside, the novel is dense with political references and asides. For someone like myself, who was unfamiliar with the language and thinking of the Cold War era, the book can prove quite difficult to really get a grip on. The main plot tends to take a backstage to the political postulating. MacLeod also makes a MacGuffin out of a major plot point, derailing the final act and enhancing that sense of dissatisfaction. In MacLeod’s defense, The Star Fraction was his first novel and his reputation as a top-notch author would seem to redeem this slightly false start.

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this book to the masses. It is strong enough to stand on its own as a piece of fiction, but without its follow-up novels in the Fall Revolution, I can’t imagine The Star Fraction occupying a place on anyone’s to-read list. That said, anyone with an open mind and a desire to read and learn might enjoy this quirky little novel.

[Wreade1872 · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok... i'm torn on this one. The writing is really good in the broad-strokes. This is a complicated world it creates. I did find it bordering on satire at times, i found some of the mini-states a bit too silly to take seriously.

Its a bit detached, none of the characters are great and they can feel quite pulpy at time. Its an odd mix of mostly high-brow with odd elements of low-brow action/sex etc.

My main issue is that i kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and except once at the end, it never did. So many small situations and events would occur, the protagonists would do something.. i'd wait expecting some twist or unexpected detour only to find there was none and we where on to the next bit.

The ending adds a little something but the reader had most of the information about it for a long while before that, by the time we get the final reveal i was mostly too tired to care. Also i didn't have much personal attachment to the world or characters which also made me care less.

Anyway, this is still a very well described story. Perhaps even a bit overly complicated. It often feels quite deep, although now and then i'd get 'Johnny Mnemonic' flashbacks.

[Tomislav · Rating 4 out of 5]

27 October 2007 - ****. This is the first novel in the Fall Revolution series, although it is not strictly a sequential series. The books are:
#1 The Star Fraction (1995) - Prometheus Award winner 1996.
#2 The Stone Canal (1996) - Prometheus Award winner 1998.
#3 The Cassini Division (1998) – Nebula Award nominee 1999.
#4 The Sky Road (1999) – British SF Award winner 1999.

This was Ken MacLeod's first novel in 1995, and is the beginning of his Fall Revolution series. It also establishes the Earth setting from which his Engines of Light series launches. This is a very complicated book, set in a highly balkanized future Britain. As an American unfamiliar with any major or minor British political movements he may be extrapolating on, such as "libertarian socialism", I found it somewhat difficult to keep track of the possible alignments between the mini-states, factions, and movements - although I'm not sure if being British would have helped. In this world, mercenaries of the militias and militant factions, as well as of the mini-governments operate in a system regulated under US/UN hegemony. The action surrounding the four main characters, and mysterious artificial intelligence(s), rolls from zone to zone, with good time to learn about each. I feel that the book could have used a more consistent character focus, as it seemed to drift from one to another. But for pure world-building, this is an amazing book.

[prcardi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Storyline: 1/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 2/5
World: 3/5

This was one of those rare cases where it would have been better to have read an author interview before starting the book. I delight in creativity and surprises to the extent that I usually don't read synopses and always avoid reviews. There was a lot of creativity and some good surprises, but I spent most of the book in a fugue trying to figure out why any of it mattered.

In many ways I should have connected with The Star Fraction. I like political theory and economics. It is great when an author takes an idea and follows it to its logical conclusion if only to see what it would look like or how it would work. MacLeod was doing all these things. I just couldn't tell what he was doing with them.

MacLeod gives us a near future world in which the European, and particularly the British, social and political order is markedly transformed. Why that transformation occurred, its significance, the relevance to the plot, nor MacLeod's point, however, are obvious. It is an inventive and disorienting world, all the more so because of the cyberpunk flair - interfacing technology, biological enhancements, drugs galore, pervasive delinquency, and disdain for rules (including those of grammar, continuity, clarity, and order). There's no map, though, to help navigate through this world. There were a couple of chapters, later in the book, where MacLeod unexpectedly makes order out of disorder; he gives adequate history or explanation to put contemporary events or factions into their intended context. These moments, however, were too few and too far into the book and left too many things left unexplained.

As a narrative, this was as inscrutable as the political and technological. MacLeod had difficulty relating events through the character's perspectives. Character motivations, then, were often shallow, supposedly dramatic developments came off as unremarkable, "difficult" decisions appeared either obvious or unimportant, and most relationships, interactions, and motivations were perfunctory. For much of the book, I couldn't follow why the characters thought some pieces of information or goals were worth pursuing and others weren't. I couldn't tell why some evidence was relevant and others not. I really did not know whom I was supposed to care about or what I hoped to see happen at the end of the book.

This is all the more unfortunate because I think I'd like to hang out with MacLeod. He's obviously interested in technology and the future, he's thinking through the implications of concepts such as historical materialism and playing with the varieties of capitalism. He's well versed in leftist political philosophy and movements. Were he to have told me what he intended to do with this book, I would have cheered him on and eagerly read it. Without that background, though, I simply didn't know what was going on. Others who are cyberpunk fans can read the book for its edginess and propensity for destruction. My guess still is that most readers miss the point of the book. That is MacLeod's fault, though, and not the readers. I suspect that he had detailed notes and backgrounds for every political faction and ideology in the book. I'd bet money on him having thought through and noted the theoretical implications and significance of the economies described herein. I think that he had substantive critiques and admissions that were thoughtful and revelatory. None of it made it from the author's head to the book, unfortunately.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘The Star Faction’ gave me a pleasant feeling of nostalgia, reminding me of all the cyberpunk that I read during my teenage years. Not surprising, as it was published in 1995. Although the focus on convoluted left wing politics gives it an original twist, there’s also a lot of this sort of very familiar business:

"All right," he said. He stood and stretched and grinned at all of them. “I’m gonna need a terminal, my gun, the drug samples, some anti-som tabs, and half a pack of filter joints.” He looked away for a moment, then sighed to himself. “Medium tar.”

As with past cyberpunk reading experiences, for a good deal of the novel I didn’t really know what was going on or who that guy was (I kept getting Jordan and Donovan confused). There was a great deal of jargon being thrown around which took me a good while to pick up. Possibly as a consequence of this density of linguistic innovation, I found the characters a bit flat - an issue I have often encountered in cyberpunk. At the end, I had a nagging feeling that I was missing something. I think I got the overall AI plot, but the political machinations remained somewhat opaque. Maybe I’m out of practise with cyberpunk and need a refresher course before jacking back into the mainframe? In any event, ‘The Star Fraction’ was a pretty fun read, with enough wit and incident to keep me amused on a five hour train journey, but I probably won’t seek out the sequels. Cyberpunk in general seems dated twenty years later, when so much of life is actually lived in cyberspace. The politics here (or what I grasped of them) are also rather difficult to relate to the contemporary world.

[Sahil Raina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like this book. I found it to be problematic in at least two ways:

1) it replaced science fiction with techno-babble; and
2) it latched onto one, extremely unlikely, world-view and just ran with it.

First, I like science fiction; I do not like techno-babble, which is what parts of this book often became. I remember parts where the author talked about "genetic search algorithms" and other techno-babble type stuff just to throw such words around. Why not just say search? I found that extremely off-putting.

Second, while left-leaning I may be, the whole political structure of the world in this book was rather unbelievable. It took me quite a while to figure out that we were really only talking about Great Britain. Within GB, lots of mini-states with their own rules existed, some left-wing, some fundamental religious types, etc. But the way they were dealt with in the book was frankly disappointing. Like I said, the author knew the outcome he wanted and drove the story, no matter how ridiculously absurd, towards that political outcome - not very interesting.

Finally, in the end, there is a section, maybe 3 paragraphs, that talk about the AI that is supposedly underlying much of the plot in the book. Why have a sudden reveal in the end of the book when the rest of it was dedicated to techno-babble and absurdist political hypothesizing?

Despite all that, I did finish the book, which either means the book wasn't that bad or that I just really wanted something to do on the subway the past 2 weeks...

[Carlos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably, the worst sci-fi book I've ever read. Boring, and with a near future quite difficult to believe. The story makes no sense. I didn't feel anything for anyone of the characters but indiference. I force myself to finish it, but at the end I skipped the last couple of chapters, enough is enough.

I bought this book following the recomendation of the late Iain Banks, whose books I really enjoyed. Obviously that recommendation was based on his friendship with Macleod and nothing else.

I'm not going to read anything else by Macleod.

[Mohammed Abdikhader Firdhiye · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a slow start to this book i couldnt imagine it would end being a smart political near future SF that became much better. It had compelling characters, interesting cyberpunk elements and political ideas,world that made you think. Surprisingly strong for a debut novel.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a decent book - my second read from MacLeod. It is marxist sci-fi, but not completely blind to the faults in that particular philosophy. It is an interesting take on modern society and how we could arrive at the Singularity, albeit in 2025 this particular scenario seems more far-fetched perhaps than it did back in 1995. I liked the characters, but notice that they don't carry over to the other books unfortunately. There were elements here that reminded me of MacLeod's friend Iain M. Banks, but Banks is clearly a superior writer. Let's see how things go in the rest of this series, shall we?

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars
I thought I was going to like this, the first in the Fall Revolution sequence, but it was only OK.
Future Britain is balkanized into kingdoms and multiple mini-states, which might be military surveillance, or libertarian, or fundamentalist.
Main characters:
-Jordan, teenage nonbeliever from a religious enclave; he wants out.
-Moh, a security mercenary whose dad was a big Trotskyist organizer.
-Janis, a young scientist doing sketchy memory research on mice.
Their paths cross after Janis’ lab is broken into and she calls for special security, who turns out to be Moh; they run together to Norlonto, the best (free-est) enclave in Britain. Jordan makes some money in a clandestine software operation and uses it to escape from Beulah; he meets Janis and Moh in a bar in Norlonto and they team up. Meanwhile a nascent AI may have emerged and be on the loose, the company Janis works for is in trouble with the world tech police for the memory research, Moh gets in a feud with his ex-girlfriend’s political organization, and some mysterious labor troubles are causing political problems and rioting.

I’ve liked many of Ken MacLeod’s later books, so why not this one?
1) The narrative was hard to follow. The characters’ decisions and the events that happened did not seem threaded together in a manner I could understand; I kept paging back to reread things, figure out who some organization was, see if I had missed something.
2) I didn’t really get how their society worked. Why didn’t most of these people just get jobs, or move somewhere else (to a better enclave like Norlonto) and work there, make some money, enjoy life? There was a lot of running around and political organizing and rebel forces for (it seemed) not much clear purpose.
3) Many people’s motivations/behavior didn’t make sense for me. Janis must have spent years in school and applying for grants to become a research scientist, but in a matter of hours she left her whole life and career behind and joined Moh’s collective as a soldier/hanger-on. Moh got in trouble not only with his ex-girlfriend but also Carbon Life Alliance, because he let Catherine go without a ransom. But why wouldn’t the org be happy to save fifty thousand pounds, instead of posturing about the importance of “freeing a hostage” even though he let her go for free?

Some parts were interesting: Jordan’s religious-nut parents discovering his stash of secular books; the AI hiding itself in the gun; Donovan switching careers from software to “crank” publishing. But overall the story did not hang together for me. Maybe the rest of the Fall Revolution series makes things more clear.

[Isabel (kittiwake) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Norlonto had the smell of a port city, that openness to the world: the sense that you had only to step over a gap to be carried away to anywhere. (Perhaps the sea had been the original fifth-colour country, but it had been irretrievably stained with the bloody ink from all the others.) And it had also the feel that the world had come to it. In part this was illusory: most of the diversity around them had arrived much earlier than the airships and space platforms, yet her and there Kohn could pick up the clacking magnetic boots, the rock-climber physique, the laid-back Esperanto drawl or the orbital labour aristocracy. Men and women who'd hooked a lift on a re-entry glider to blow a month's pay in a shorter time, and in more inventive ways, than Khazakhstan or Guiné or Florida could allow.

I've read this author's "Engines of Light Trilogy" on a book ring, and very much enjoyed them. "The Star Fraction" was his first novel, and the first book of a quartet. The next book in the series, "The Stone Canal" is already on my TBR pile and I don't think it'll be long before I get round to reading it and acquiring the other two.

"The Star Fraction" is set in a near-future Britain that split into a patchwork of small states, but overshadowed by the power of the US/UN, whose Space Defence system allows them to prevent states such as Norlonto from realising their ambitions to expand their activities into space. The mini-states are controlled by different political factions, and their convoluted alliances, both overt and covert, mean that you have to pay careful attention to what is going on; you can’t let your attention wander while reading this book. Once I got the hang of the splintered left-wing factions that the hero of this novel navigates with ease, and the various entities and programs running on the net, I found it really exciting, and it had a strong ending unlike a lot of other books in the cyberpunk/post-cyberpunk genre.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the beginning, MacLeod's novel is bound up in political ideologies, philosophy, and various factions of rebels and idealists. And, at heart, this is the problem within the novel. More important than plot or character, it seems that MacLeod wants to explore ideas and logical progressions from historical changes, as wrapped up in Marxist philosophy, socialism, and capitalism. Nothing works, and the characters and scientific developments along the way are alternately stuck in the middle or fighting multiple systems at once. While the ideas here, and many of the scenes and characters as well, are interesting and engaging, there's never enough focus on character or the plots of here-and-now (as opposed to historical or ideological or political, as the case may be) in the novel for readers to really gain a footing of interest.

Was I entertained? At many points, I was, just as I was often impressed by the twists and turns MacLeod put together. But was I so engaged that I had to turn the page, or that I was anxious that a particular character triumph or discover some truth? No. And, sadly, I don't really feel the need to pick up the next piece in the series. I can acknowledge MacLeod's accomplishments in this piece, but for me, I desperately needed less theory and political argument, and a bit more development of the characters who might have made me care more about their ideals. Simply, I think that the book just took on too much in this first installment of the series.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps this soars after the first quarter (and I've read some reviews that suggest it improves), but I'm not into it after 25%, and life is short, and I probably won't live to read all the books I would really really have liked, so my patience is limited.

What didn't work for me? Too many viewpoint characters (I'm a quarter in, and some we've only seen once), uneven plotting, lengthy incomprehensible flashbacks (let alone a drug-induced memory-enhancing trip), and a lack of sense of purpose: I like it when I can see where my books are going, and then they surprise me along the way. Just a bunch of stuff happening isn't a plot (Forster famously explained its essence as story = the king died and then the queen died, but plot = the king died and then the queen died because of grief.)

Apparently this is cyberpunk, a genre I'm not sure I've read much of (other than Neal Stephenson, who seems more sui generis, to me), and when I've tried it before (e.g. William Gibson) I've never got too far. I'm more a Kage Baker, Ray Bradbury, Connie Willis kind of SF reader, I suppose. Tried this one because Jo Walton talked up a later book in the series, but for this first one, no, it's not for me.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).

[Buzz H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. It reminds me a little of Neuromancer, but that seminal classic moves in fourth and fifth gear. The Star Fraction operates in first and, if you're lucky, second. And it's really the pacing that did this novel in for me. I loved the world and the ideas. The characters were not bad. But the pacing was glacial and cluttered. I ultimately made it only halfway through before putting this one down.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Cassini Division, one of the semi-stand alone sequels. The Star Fraction was Mr. MacLeod's first novel, and I hope that that accounts for its flaws. I'll try another and see what I think.

[Zéro Janvier · Rating 3 out of 5]

J’avais entendu parler de ce roman, et du cycle auquel il appartient, en me renseignant sur des œuvres de science-fiction où des modèles politiques alternatifs sont explorés.

C’est bien le cas ici avec Ken MacLeod qui imagine un futur relativement proche où le Royaume-Uni a éclaté après une guerre européenne ; après une brève République, le Royaume a été restauré mais ne contrôle plus tout le territoire ; des enclaves plus ou moins indépendantes expérimentent des modèles de société alternatifs : écologistes, socialistes, féministes, religieux, etc.

Le cadre imaginé par l’auteur m’a beaucoup plu. Les trois personnages qu’il nous propose de suivre sont également intéressants, même si je n’ai pas forcément réussi à m’attacher à tous. Le récit lui-même est un peu lent à démarrer et je n’ai pas toujours été captivé, mais c’est peut-être dû à mon rythme de lecture très ralenti depuis deux semaines : je suis en vacances avec de longues journées de randonnée, je n’ai lu que quelques pages quotidiennes, ce qui ne facilite pas l’immersion dans le récit. Quoi qu’il en soit, la fin est réussie et donne clairement envie de lire la suite, ce que je vais m’empresser de faire.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times was closer to three stars, probably not objectively 4 but that's personal bias. Unfortunate that the two main female characters mostly feel like they're there to be romances, at least until the last quarter of the book when Janis gets her own plot. Additionally, while I love the full-immersion style of worldbuilding, full of tantalizing hints to things that aren't fully explained, you need explanations for world elements that are plot critical. Unfortunately, some of these come a bit too late in the book, like 1/3 through, in ways that undermine the momentum and comprehensibility slightly. Probably rating this a bit higher than it deserves because I loved the world and the intense political engagement (reviewers who think this book was "one-sided" or had ideological blinders on really didn't understand it). Hilarious for being the only book I've ever read where the (semi-)chosen one is special because they're the red-diaper baby of trotskyists.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read. When it starts off, it just throws you right into a complex world and political situation, trusting that you can figure it out all by yourself. And you can, with a little bit of work, and it's worth the work.

While at times I feel this was *super* heavy on the socialism theoreticizing and dialog, it is relevant to the story, and does help you understand the reasons behind "current" events.

The plot is multi-threaded and complex, and the characters are similarly complex and interesting. Janis was, I felt, the weakest character. Her transition from lab scientist to gun toting revolutionary was accomplished *much* too successfully and easily.

Overall I enjoyed it, and will certainly continue reading in this series.

[Luke Burrage · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clearing out my "currently reading" shelf of books that I abandoned. This one I started reading thinking it was a followup to a different book... but it wasn't.

I got a good 50% of the way though it though. Not sure why, because nothing about it was exactly captivating. Something to do with unionising construction workers? Boring!

[Jan Jackson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing special. The characters were no more than shapes, and the politicising heavy-handed and overdone. The gun could have been interesting, but it wasn’t developed. Sort of Iain M. Banks crossed with David Lynch. I won. It didn’t.

[Anthony Buck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it hard to work out what was going on at times, and the characters ranged from dislikeable to dull.

[Daniel Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really tried to like this book. I think there's a lot here that is unique, interesting, and extremely creative. Ken Macleod is an author whose work I've struggled to connect with once before, and I wanted to give him another chance due to wide acclaim from critics and fans. I've also heard good things online about this book in particular and its series in general. As it stands now, I'm within minutes of closing the back page I'm annoyed. That's never a good sign when finishing a book you had high hopes for. At times The Star Fraction was brilliant. It had sprinkles of very deep insight into the human condition and the nature of authority and sovereignty, and I found quite a few quotable passages that I've taken note of to carry with me. That being said, there are some real flaws that just kept poking me in the eye while I was trying to read, spoiling some of the better moments. In the last 50 pages or so I was determined to give this book at least 3 stars because I believed the author had created something worthy and new-feeling, but the ending was extremely disappointing and managed to highlight some of the issues I had throughout the book, causing me to close the circle in a negative way on some things I was unsure of prior to the ending. I wanted so very badly to try to give this book a positive rating because, while this book really didn't resonate with me for reasons I'll explain, I felt that the author had created something that absolutely would resonate with others. At the very end of the book, it felt as though some promises he'd implicitly made throughout the story were not met, which is a primary reason for my frustration upon completion. Another issue is the organization of the book, which seemed at times to wander so much that I just wanted Macleod to move the plot along in a clearer direction.

This book's bright spots lie in Macleod's vision, creativity, and descriptive imagery. He's imagined a future Earth in which some callous human traits have managed to dominate society worldwide, resulting in a fracturing of states and countries across the globe. The book takes place in what used to be known as England, but due to some kind of never-fully-explained upheaval that takes place before this story begins England has become a fractious, divided patchwork of individual regimes. It's implied that a similar development has occurred in most other countries and regions in both hemispheres. The notable exception is the United States, who apparently have managed to either co-opt or coerce the United Nations to the point that they're referred to either interchangeably or as "U.S./U.N." Each of these small regimes varies in size from what appears to be city-state proportions down to areas as small as a single block of a town. Within each of these mini-governments, the authorities having jurisdiction each get to set laws, control customs, levy armed forces, and generally act as independently as possible from everybody else. It is implied that his results in a sort of divided culture where everybody tends to group up only with others almost exactly like themselves. However, this point is undercut by the wide variety and extensive diversity (both genetic and societal) of the characters who seem to be - loosely - aligned. If Macleod is trying to put a spotlight on the dangers of a fractured populace, having folks from all walks of life come together for poorly-defined reasons harmoniously and spontaneously isn't helping to push this narrative. Layered on top of this is a global "datasphere" (read: "internet"). The datasphere will feel familiar to those of us living 30 years after this book was published as we probably all use the internet every day in some capacity. Here is one aspect of Macleod's strength as a writer: his technological foresight and imagination is right up there with the best science fiction writers of his time. Unfortunately for the reader, the author either chose not to or was unable to convey his ideas in a way that is comprehensible to his audience. I will detail this more in latter paragraphs, don't worry. As the plot begins to form, we are introduced to several primary characters who come together in what felt like a tenuous way. Circumstances do push them together initially, but their decisions to realign their motivations and allegiances at the drop of a hat didn't feel like it had a realistic impetus behind it. These characters group together to foment a revolution that feels like it's unnecessary to me. As they either inadvertently or intentionally push the world closer to the brink of governmental rebirth, the story sort of fell apart for me, and towards the end it really felt as though the author had either given up or written himself into a corner and tried to cop out until he could gather all the threads together coherently in the sequels.

Now we come to the point where I must detail what didn't work for me in The Star Fraction in greater detail. I feel mean every time I write a negative review, but just saying "this book is bad" is both inaccurate and unfair to the author and all the folks behind the scenes who worked really hard on this novel and deserve to know why it didn't work for me. I hope he and they will take this criticism for what it is: detailed, incisive feedback intended to help people find books they may really connect with (even and especially if I didn't).

My first issue with this book began to sink in quite early on. I took copious notes on my thoughts about this book because it both made me swing wildly from liking it to disliking it multiple times and because at times it can be quite dense and I was trying to parse what I was reading into some semblance of a sensical tale. My first strong opinion about this book, and my premonition that I may be in for a rough ride, was when I realized it was feeling a lot like William Gibson's Count Zero. I really didn't like Count Zero because it felt like it was so vague and sparse in descriptive narration that at times I couldn't tell what was happening, who was talking, or even what setting and time period we were in from moment to moment. This happened to me so frequently in Count Zero that I got really upset at times with Gibson's choices to obfuscate and cloud things in a way that occasionally felt intentional. While there was less of the mystical, and a lot less of what felt like intentional confusion on Macleod's part, I would much prefer no intentional confusion in my books unless it serves a literary purpose. To be fair to Macleod, there were several times where I made myself question whether I was just misunderstanding an aspect of depth that Macleod was inserting into his book. At times I felt like this book was intended for people smarter than I am, and I'm not a dumb man (I promise!). Whenever I stopped to consider whether the issue was with me rather than the book, I came to the conclusion that it felt like the book was leading me around by the nose with no clear destination. And that, in itself, isn't a bad thing. This strategy can have real benefits in a mystery novel or something with suspense at its core, but it felt inappropriate here. This book is mostly about exploring a political landscape and scheme very different from that with which we are familiar in a setting that feels like the near-future. It was as though this book was intended to be read multiple times and that Macleod did not put much effort into being understood, which I didn't appreciate. The character development - or lack thereof - also hurt my comprehension (aside from being its own issue) because all the characters felt like the exact same personality in different bodies. If this was intentional, it wasn't fleshed out in a way that made sense to me. Regardless of intent, it sure did cause difficulty in ascertaining who was talking at many points in the book due to the fact that they all sound the same and have virtually identical opinions about the same topics. Added to this, they all seem to be wildly fixated on politics to the point of monomania, making them all feel as though they need a hobby. This sort of monomaniacal dialogue could've been intended to combat the confusion Macleod may have suspected he was inducing, but it feels more like he's beating me over the head with the same concepts until I tap out. Further evidence that he may have been concerned about his reader's comprehension only after the fact comes at the end of the book.

The ending of this book was extremely disappointing to me, and ended up hurting this book's overall rating by a full star. There is a wrap-up summary in place of an epilogue that attempts to explain some of what we've just experienced. This felt like the end of the movie Animal House when the credits are rolling and the viewer is treated to a "where is he now?" of all the characters, giving us a separation from the wild events of the movie and a sense of conclusion to a story that otherwise wouldn't really have one (and, in my opinion didn't need one). In this case the summary felt clunky and awkward, and at my most cynical I wonder if it was grafted on after the book was written because an editor or publisher told Macleod that his book felt unfinished. It seems to attempt to paper over some of the missing pieces in the plot, and poorly. If it had been expanded, or if this information had been worked into the bulk of the book in a way that's more respectful of the reader's comprehension and intelligence, I think this would've been OK. Unfortunately, it felt too on-the-nose. This semi-epilogue seems to kill off or leave decades in the past the characters and settings from this book. There are two sequels. They must be about the AI who's being narrated in the first person in the final couple pages, despite the rest of the book being told in third person. This perspective change seemed jarring, but as it was intentional I will leave it alone. The AI is explaining some key plot points, including the fact that it is the perpetrator behind a major development that drives the climax of the book. The ending feels more like a stoppage than an ending. The book really feels as though it needed to either end about 50 pages earlier or 50 pages later, with more explanation. The denouement felt too long and drawn out, and it feels redundant when considered in addition to the almost-epilogue. My biggest issue with this sorta-epilogue is that it just feels lazy. It really struck me that this passage should've been unnecessary, and would've been if Macleod had taken the time and put in the work to integrate this information into the body of the novel. This leads me to believe that perhaps the utter paucity of explanatory information in this book is due to a similar reluctance to go back and make clearer many of the plot points that confused me. I guess what I'm left with is the sense of a book unfinished, in more ways than one.

Another major issue with this book was the central premise of the plot: we absolutely must have a revolution to right all the wrongs in the world! But it's never clear who they're rebelling against, why they feel the need to rebel in the first place, or who they're aligned with from moment to moment. Part of this confusion about characters' allegiances was, I believe, intentionally included to give us the sense that the type of governmental structure Macleod is showing us would result naturally in chaos and overlapping interests. There is a structure where "terrorism" is legal within bounds as long as you're a registered combatant attacking legally-recognized legitimate targets. This structure results in many individual extrajudicial militias forming, both for hire and connected with the authority in each region. This mercenary structure and seemingly casual violence with a strange emphasis on "minimum force" seems both pointless and wasteful of human life. Again, this may be a point Macleod is attempting to hold up to the reader as an inevitability of the culture he's created and a result of some innate human trait. This setting is interesting and - to me - unique amongst the books I've read. The downfall here is that the narration can be so confusing that I could never tell who any of the characters were fighting for or against, and from start to finish I never figured this out to any degree of certainty. There were times when a character's motivations were stated explicitly, but their motivations were likely to change almost immediately after, sometimes multiple times. Related to this, I could not for the life of me figure out why these folks felt the need to rebel. All the main characters want to overthrow "the state," sometimes referred to as the Hanoverians. But we're never introduced to the Hanoverians; they have no identity and we never even feel the impact of their actions, which aren't described. There's no sense that these characters are oppressed, and since each faction has its own rules independent of its neighbors, how does "the state" impact them in any way that justifies revolution? Added to this, if they really felt oppressed in their micro-state, why not just move two blocks and be in a different one? There are communists working with capitalists who work with socialists who are affiliated with the green movements who are somehow sharing a common interest with the space movement. There's so much going on and such an interconnected and unexplained web of different groups that I couldn't put any of it together into a coherent whole. There is some lip service paid to Space Defense, a U.S./U.N. installation of satellites with weapons aimed at the Earth, ostensibly to preemptively destroy facilities involved in nuclear proliferation or AI development. These weapons are threatened several times but never used, and they feel like a wasted plot device that never realized its potential. As a motivator for overthrowing a government that had nothing to do with the Space Defense satellites, it feels very flimsy. On a related note, when the revolution finally comes, it's unclear what sparks it. When the Americans join in in a revolt out of implied solidarity with their cousins across the pond, it's also unclear why they would do so as there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to care one way or another. In the end, I never really understood why anyone was doing the things they were doing or for whom. At the conclusion, some of this is explained but insufficiently (and way too late). This strongly reinforces my opinion that The Star Fraction was meant to be read multiple times, which honestly isn't really my style unless the plot is much more engaging or the setting is so inviting that I want to return. This lack of apparent motivation for the plot was a glaring weakness in the pillar holding up the framework of the story. This was a problem for me throughout, and I simply couldn't ignore it once I noticed it.

This review is on par with my longest ever and it's exhausting me almost as much as the book itself did. However, I feel a responsibility to explain why this book was such a problem for me, and while I'll probably be reading the next one anyway. Part of the problem is serious spoiler territory: the main character dies. He doesn't die in any way that really makes sense to me, or in any way that seems to have a major impact on the plot, but he's held up by his comrades as a messianic figure (literally in these terms at least once). Why? He doesn't seem to deserve this reverence, despite being a pretty stand-up guy. He was screwing around with dangerous things on the internet while trying to foment a revolution, and the internet slapped back through the influence of an AI he's somehow brought to full consciousness with a code he manages to remember subconsciously from his childhood. It just feels so unbelievable and is so poorly explained that I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief. There are many books in which the main character dies, and quite a few where he's not really dead but seems dead. In this case, he's dead. Fully dead, as is explained (shockingly, since almost nothing else is) by the AI residing in his gun's CPU to his grieving girlfriend. There are two more books after this one, though. And there are another 50+ pages of book after he dies. This seemed like a poor choice to me, as it's implied that decades and generations have passed from the end of this book to the start of the next one. The only connections I can see between the two books are the space aspect and the AI's existence, but this feels as tenuously held together as the internal plot devices and felt really unsatisfying.

Thank you for hanging in there for this epic of a review. Lastly, there are several little irritants that built up like sand in an oyster into something that was unfortunately much less spectacular than a pearl. The first and foremost of the minor irritants to me was the stilted and 2-dimensional love interests that seemed shoehorned into this book. In my opinion, this book didn't need romance at all. None of the characters felt enough like people with emotions (much less distinct individuals) that they needed a love interest. The most cringeworthy example of this is the relationship between Jordan and Cat. These two end up getting married with almost no sense of them ever getting to know each other. At one point, Jordan finds out something that Cat had withheld from him and which I'd consider manipulation, and his response is to say something along the lines of "You're so loyal to someone other than me that it warrants grudging respect. Wanna get married?" Excuse me? That's your proposal? Try a little bit harder, man. You seem like a cardboard cutout akin to Flat Stanley, who somehow has more personality than you do. The whole marriage and relationship seems to be based on nothing other than initial physical attraction, and it's never fleshed out or returned to in any significant way. This felt like an editor told Macleod "you really have something here, but where's the sex?" and so the author went back and inserted some. It ended up coming off icky rather than romantic, and totally unnecessary either way. The other two irritants were just inconsistencies, like the time "24.03." I believe you mean 00.03, if we're using a 24-hr clock. If not, I'm baffled. Also, Britain is described as being demolished, yet everybody still seems to live there and there's no sign of destruction. That didn't fit together.

This book was a struggle for me most of the way through. I can't really recommend it, but the tech was so interesting I'm going to see what happens next anyway. Maybe it can be redeemed. One can only hope.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Remarkable book, mining Marxism’s great SF potential at last. Deeply politically incorrect somehow. I skipped Macleod until now, assuming that I already had the Scottish radical SF angle from Banks. But this is completely different. It’s detailed and tragic and filled with left self-sabotage. Clearly written by someone who has spent one too many evenings in vitriolic, pedantic, and useless Organising meetings.

Stone hauled a tattered tabloid from the inside of his jacket and spread it on the table.
‘Red Star,’ Stone said. ‘It’s a bit extreme, but some of the things they say make sense. Thought you might be interested, Moh.’
Does it show? Kohn wondered wildly. Is there some mark of Cain branded on my forehead that identifies me to everybody else, no matter what I say or don’t say, no matter how much I want to put it all behind me? He picked the paper up reluctantly, took his shades off to read. There it was, the banner with the strange device: a hammer-and-sickle, facing the opposite way from the traditional Soviet one, with a ‘4’ over the hammer.
He didn’t read beyond the masthead.
‘The only red stars I know about,’ he said, ‘are dead, off the main sequence, and consist mostly of faintly glowing gas.

Why Marxist fiction (and not Marxist politics)?: the grand conflicts, the frustrated utopian futurism, the sweat and blood, the technology-first view of history. And also a lot of literary potential in the dwarfed, self-defeating, and famously speciated real-life cadres. Macleod includes aching details about British leftist culture - calling your parents by their first name, Levi jackets as some kind of statement, the pompous set phrases of resistance ("comrades, this is no accident"), the paranoid tint the whole world takes when history is your foe. I miss the sincerity and spurious clarity, the cussed, blessed obliviousness to which century it is.

The lunchtime crowd was so noisy she no longer noticed it, nor the wall-covering black-and-white portraits of Lech Walesa and Nelson Mandela and Winston Churchill and Bobby Sands and Wei Jingshen and others to whose memory various factions had successively dedicated the place…

Others moved through the shadows of the trees around him and he recognized them, the old comrades, the dead on leave: John Ball in his rough robe, Winstanley building a hut in a clearing, Tom Paine slipping him a wink as he and Blake stepped over the sleeping Bunyan; Harvey and Jones, Eleanor Marx and Morris….

The foreword is essential reading - KM reveals himself to be a rare bird, a leftist who understands the dreadful force of Mises’ calculation argument.

Unfortunately, there’s no reason why the Economic Calculation Argument and the Materialist Conception of History couldn’t both be true. What if capitalism is unstable, and socialism is impossible?

As a result, the main conflict in this is not socialism vs capitalism (the ancap zone is the nicest place in the book) but progress vs primitivism and resistance vs (American and UN) empire

There were times when Kohn loathed the Left, when some monstrous stupidity almost, but never quite, outweighed the viciousness and venality of the system they opposed. Ally with the barbarians against the patricians and praetorians… think again, proletarians!… His co-op had lived by defending what he still saw as the seeds of progress – the workers’ organizations and the scientists and, if necessary, the capitalists – against the enemies of that modern industry on which all their conflicting hopes relied…

(She’d often wondered just what molecule or compound was responsible for hysteria and ineducability in the middle classes: it must have seeped into the food-chain sometime in the nineteen-sixties, and become ever more concentrated since.)

‘Fuck them and their nazi economics.’ He punched his palm. ‘Protection. Conservation. Restriction. Deep ecology. Give me deep technology any day. They don’t scare me. I’m damned if I’ll crawl, my children’s children crawl on the earth in some kind a fuckin harmony with the environment.

…a permanent party – in both senses, an occasion and an organization of the privileged

The OTT cynicism about the UN here contrasts well with the soppy treatment of the last fictional UN I encountered (Ada Palmer’s wise ancient saviour order).

The antagonists are done well. They're actually fighting to prevent billions of people dying, and their plan is actually the exact same as the one executed by The Gun deus ex machina. They also have some sense of AI x-risk, unlike the happy go lucky protagonists.

The AI stuff is good, and the antagonists are suitably scared of it. The expert system architecture is quaint but he did his best. The death of the AI civilisation, billions of apparently sentient and highly enhanced minds is not treated very seriously, not half as seriously as losing Moh alone. But I suppose they are easier to redo than humans.
Yep:

the whole [AI] rumour was so apocalyptic that she had difficulty crediting it could really happen in her own lifetime. She knew this was exactly how people would feel just before the real apocalypse, that nearly everyone who’d faced some intrusive threat to their everyday existence – war, revolution, genocide, purges, disaster – had faced it with the firm conviction that things like this just didn’t happen or didn’t happen here or didn’t happen to people like them. But she also knew there would be no end of false alarms, lying wonders, false prophets with a Lo! here and a Hi! there, before whatever the real thing was came along. Indeed, they were part of the reason why the real thing always came like a thief in the night or… like a secret policeman in the early hours of the morning.

There are limits to Macleod’s scepticism. Trotsky looms large here as a wise prophet (never mind his own peasant-murdering and purely opportunistic democratic pivot).

‘I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and a clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.’
The gentle words, harshly spoken in a polyglot accent, made Kohn’s eyes sting.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We haven’t done very well.’
The Old Man laughed. ‘You are not the future! You – you are only the present.’

And the revolution wins, brutal and repressive as it instantly becomes.

Also notable for a negative portrayal of Archipelago, voluntary ideological nations with exit rights. The only real critique is that they war on each other all the time (millions of deaths a year), and indoctrinate their subjects so that people don’t exercise their exit rights. Looking at real-life migration patterns in the face of violent borders, few authoritarian regimes have so far managed to indoctrinate so successfully.

New Situationists, Alternative Luddites (they wore space-rigger gear and blew up wind-power plants), Christianarchists, cranks, creeps, commies, tories – all had had their say, in colour.

Macleod is aware that the themes in this 1995 book aged badly in the next decades - revolution lost its hold even among radicals, American hegemony beclowned itself, and the greens took over the left.

And closer to hand, nearer than infinity, she could see the other free wheels turn. Stars and stripes and hammers and sickles flaunted their fading colours to the real stars that held no promises, only hopes and endless, endless lands.

More mind candy than Grand Synthesis, but a strong first novel anyway.

[Mark Cheverton (scifipraxis) · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the aftermath of World War III, the US/UN orbital platforms enforce an uneasy nuclear truce over the world. In the UK, the Republic has fallen, leaving a balkanised landscape of militarised polises touting every political ideology imaginable. Moh Kohn, a mercenary for hire, awakens an AI in the network triggering plans for a long-awaited revolution that will bring the Republic back to power.

Known for his heavily political SF, Ken Macleod's first novel feels overexcited, throwing everything into the mix without creating the narrative space for satisfying resolution. There are big ideas here for 1995 — talking guns, AIs, artificial life, but all take a back seat to the didactic politics and frat-house cyberpunk aesthetic that dominates the page.

His worldbuilding is rich and deep, imagining a fractured and violent UK, riven by a free market of competing ideologies from Christian fundamentalists to libertarian socialists — it's a steep curve to climb, particularly if you're unfamiliar with Cold War and UK politics. The AI thread, seemingly so central, languishes, while the narrative practically sprints between enclaves, more eager to show off its political ideas than progress the plot.

It's overly obsessed with drugs, communal living, and instant friendships — it feels like a university student's idea of cyberpunk cool. As a result, characters' ages seem unsettlingly fluid as they move from acting with deep experience and maturity to getting high and crashing on sofas, leaving a blurred afterimage that never coheres into strong identity.

However, I can forgive its weaknesses as the marks of a new author finding his voice. Yes, it's a slog through dense political language to an unsatisfying ending. Yes, it's a raw sensory tornado of politics, ideology, and cyberpunk that doesn't settle long enough to germinate. But I enjoyed it as an origin story, evincing the creative potential to come in the subsequent Fall Revolution quartet as Macleod matures as a writer.

[Aaron Adamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an incredibly dense read. Prepare to navigate your way through every variant of communism, capitalism, socialism, and most other -isms you can think of as you follow the characters through this book. If you do, though, it's certainly worth it.

There's one big idea that I've never thought was sufficiently explored in any sci-fi novel I've read: specifically, the significance of memes as self-interested packets of information that seek to propagate themselves throughout human culture. Well, turns out that MacLeod tackled it in 1995, before most of us had ever heard the term, and it seems prescient reading it now, 22 years later. The relationship and occasional ambiguity between meme, religion, politics, social engineering, and finally computer code is roundly explored throughout this novel, and it's going to keep me thinking for quite a while.

The cons: characters were a bit thin. I could never figure out if Moh was a low-brow guy with a rudimentary command of the language or part of the technical elite - he vacillates back and forth throughout the novel and it isn't clear if he intentionally modifies his vernacular to make people underestimate him, or if this is MacLeod lacking consistency. Janis behaves more like a Hollywood damsel in distress than a research scientist. Jordan shows very little real evidence of the culture shock that you'd expect after emerging from a fundamentalist religious enclave, considering that he hops right in to being a leading expert on propaganda and computer hacking, and a lady's man to boot.

It's worth keeping in mind that this was MacLeod's debut, though, and if there's room for improvement in characterization, there's plenty of bite in his socio-political commentary and the future he envisions is simultaneously inventive and all too familiar.

[Dbdude99 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got about 25 percent thru the audiobook, then switched it off.

Pros : Well written dialog and non-dialog. Pretty good world-building and human character development. There were some interesting SF ideas introduced but ...

Cons: Way too much political discussion, mostly, centering on the feverish in-fighting among dozens of factions (communist, socialist, libertarians, anarchists and every combination of these). It got really tiring, really fast. There was a sprinkle of some interesting SF ideas, but they tended to get lost among all the political diarrhea. I found that I couldn't keep it all straight in my head (especially, listening to it on my car stereo) - I had to rewind it a few times.

I had some of the same complaints with China Mieville's Iron Council, but he managed to keep me interested with lots of weird and bizarre characters and occurrences, spread throughout the novel. MacLeod, unfortunately, just can't keep my interest. Maybe I'll try another of his series (a later one).

[Sargeatm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ich mag es eigentlich nicht, ein Buch bei knapp der Hälfte abzubrechen, aber leider konnte ich hier schon seit 30% keinen Fortschritt mehr erkennen.
Die Story bis hierhin lässt sich auf einer Seite zusammenfassen, der große Rest des Buches sind unzählige Details über die politischen Gruppierungen bzw. das dystopische Balkan-Britannien, welche zunehmend ermüdend wurden, da die Geschichte einfach nicht weiterging.