Devyniasdešimt trilijonų faustų

Quintara Marathon #3

by Jack L. Chalker, Gediminas Urbonaitis (Translator)

Daugelį šimtmečių legendos apie baisiuosius demonus šiurpino tris labiausiai išsivysčiusias galaktikos civilizacijas. Galų gale drąsiausi tyrinėtojai stoja šių demonų akivaizdon...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Aliens

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Besides being a science fiction author, Jack Laurence Chalker was a Baltimore City Schools history teacher in Maryland for a time, a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association, and was involved in the founding of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Some of his books said that he was born in Norfolk, Virginia although he later claimed that was a mistake.

He attended all but one of the World Science Fiction Conventions from 1965 until 2004. He published an amateur SF journal, Mirage, from 1960 to 1971 (a Hugo nominee in 1963 for Best Fanzine).

Chalker was married in 1978 and had two sons.

His stated hobbies included esoteric audio, travel, and working on science-fiction convention committees. He had a great interest in ferryboats, and, at his wife's suggestion, their marriage was performed on the Roaring Bull Ferry.

Chalker's awards included the Daedalus Award (1983), The Gold Medal of the West Coast Review of Books (1984), Skylark Award (1985), Hamilton-Brackett Memorial Award (1979), as well as others of varying prestige. He was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award twice and for the Hugo Award twice. He was posthumously awarded the Phoenix Award by the Southern Fandom Confederation on April 9, 2005.

On September 18, 2003, during Hurricane Isabel, Chalker passed out and was rushed to the hospital with a diagnosis of a heart attack. He was later released, but was severely weakened. On December 6, 2004, he was again rushed to hospital with breathing problems and disorientation, and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a collapsed lung. Chalker was hospitalized in critical condition, then upgraded to stable on December 9, though he didn't regain consciousness until December 15. After several more weeks in deteriorating condition and in a persistent vegetative state, with several transfers to different hospitals, he died on February 11, 2005 of kidney failure and sepsis in Bon Secours of Baltimore, Maryland.

Chalker is perhaps best known for his Well World series of novels, the first of which is Midnight at the Well of Souls (Well World, #1).

Reviews

[Strix · Rating 3 out of 5]

RTC, tl;dr I'm satisfied, it regained some of the strengths of book 1 so it was fun to read instead of a slog. Also, wtf wtf wtf wtffffffffffffffffffffffff

[keikii Eats Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

57 points/100 (3/5 stars)

Honestly, this might be rated higher if I had even an inkling what was going on more than half the book. Even backing up and rereading large parts of it did not make any of it clearer.

[Joe Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting series overall with a Scifi take on religion, particularly Christian. The ending gets a bit muddy, I was having a hard time following it, but it was interesting to me because of the Biblical parallels. The characters in this series are strong, and the weight on dialogue does a splendid job of fleshing them out better than a series of paragraphs about everything they think, know, and believe.

Overall, very much worth your time if the religious stuff isn't going to get your panties in a twist.

[David H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reread journey is complete. This was both stranger than I remembered yet perfectly sensible--I thought Chalker did a decent job with the setup (two whole books of it!) and the payoff was semi-expected and very humanocentric. All in all, an interesting trilogy that basically asks the question, "What if the demons depicted across humanity's mythologies were real?" and then combines it with a SF setting and turbocharges it so that two other friends who read this trilogy for the first time in the past year (I last read it over a decade ago) are left going "What the fuck?" at the end.

(For the record, I thought it more "cool" than "what the fuck" but maybe I used to this sort of extra-cosmic SF books for some reason.)

[Gilles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Troisième et dernier tome de la série "The Quintara marathon"

Contexte : Les humains ont essaimé dans la galaxie. Mais ils avaient été précédés et sont maintenant assimilés dans les trois grands empires qui se partagent la galaxie dans une neutralité armée. Trois empires qui ont leurs caractéristiques :

L'Échange qui mise sur l'exploitation des ressources et dirigé par des puissances cybernétiques, les Gardiens.

Les Mycohlians qui sont portés sur le mal et sont dirigés par de puissants parasites qui peuvent prendre le contrôle des autres formes de vie.

Les Mizlaplan qui abhorrent le mal et visent à répandre la bonté et dont les dirigeants sont considérés comme des dieux qui peuvent imposer leur volonté aux autres.

En plus, à cause des long voyages spatiaux de leurs ancêtres et des radiations subies dans l'espace, certains ont hérité de divers talents comme la télépathie (communication par la pensée), l'empathie (sentir ou projeter des émotions). la télékinésie (bouger les objets sans contact physique), influencer les autres, etc.

Les empires maintiennent un équilibre délicat de balance de pouvoir et partagent toutes de vielles légendes de démons cornus extrêmement puissants et dangereux.

C'est une course poursuite, pour les trois commandos des empires, pour empêcher les démons (les Quintara) de se libérer. Si cela advenait, étant donné leur puissance physique, leurs pouvoirs mentaux et leur technologie, ils menaceraient les 90 billions d'habitants des 3 empires. Et pas qu'un peu, puisqu'ils sont carnivores (les habitants leur serviraient de nourriture) et peuvent imposer leurs volontés aux autres.

Sinon, leur seul espoir est de rallier et d'unir les puissances quasi divines à la tête des empires : les Gardiens pour l'Échange, les Mycohls pour les Mycohlians et les Anges pour les Mizlaplans. Petit problème, les maîtres sont quasi inatteignables et se détestent. Mais c'est leur seul espoir.

Enfin, le rythme s'accélère et on a un aperçu des entités toutes puissantes qui sont au dessus de tout. L'auteur se permet de mélanger des bribes de religion et de les intégrer dans son histoire. On se retrouve un peu avec du quasi fantastique avec des symboles, comme les pentagrammes, qui ont des effets physiques et peuvent servir de portail. Sans compter que la science est tellement avancée qu'elle ressemble à de la magie.

Finalement, j'ai beaucoup aimé et ce n'est pas l'imagination qui manque.

[Java Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final bit of the Quintara Marathon and while I find it a satisfying ending to a decent story, I did find it to be a little weaker than the first two. It lacked some of the character development of the first two but part of that can be excused as the characters now have a defined goal and are working towards it.

There's not a lot here that is new other than the number of characters has been reduced and we find out the history of the three empires and why they were created as they were. Like in the last review I can't say much more because it's a lot of the same and saying too much will spoil the story.

[Sonja · Rating 4 out of 5]

A satisfying conclusion to the Quintara Marathon series. The Evil is released. Sides are chosen and temptations are faced. The characters finally come into contact with those who created them and discover the surreal reality of their existance and the fallibility of those who have always been considered Higher Races. It seems the lowly Terrans have a demonic heritage and are key to creating a new order. From enemies, to alliances and then friendship, the space farers must go to Hell and back in order to save their universe from being taken over by the Quintara. The ending was a bit confusing, as so much happens all at once, but once the dust settles the victors are revealed.

[Ronald Wilcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half - four stars as it continues the style and story of the first two in the series.

Second half as he tries to tie everything together for the ending - 2 stars. I had a lot of difficulty following what he tried to do and what was happening to the characters.

Love this author’s works usually but the ending of this trilogy was very disappointing to me.

[STU · Rating 3 out of 5]

My ratings for this series were roughly:
4 stars Book 1
3.5 stars Book 2
3 stars Book 3

Great build-up in Book 1,
Action and plot development in Book 2,
But Book 3 just felt like it dragged a bit, and then the climax was a bit too simple after all the build-up.

[Jonathon Donovan · Rating 3 out of 5]

the main appeal of these books for me was that humans were only a small part of a larger whole made up of a myriad of other races. do killing off all the aliens and hard committing to humans being literally chosen by god to rule the universe was a major disappointment.

[Michael Peeples · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great series.
I didn’t give this book five stars because the last twenty pages were a bit rushed and anticlimactic.

Still very much worth reading.

[Rob Trevino · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oy, it hurts my brain to understand why this book is liked. The trilogy starts well, but do you like characters talking and continually making logical leaps that turn out to be correct each time? Well sit back and hold on to your socks because this book is 95% that. The other 5% goes deeper and deeper into metaphysical ideas that I suppose sounds deep to some but to me continually sound like the writer wanting to merge physics and spirituality in a convincing way and failing. I won't even go into the odd bits where characters literally cannot control themselves in incredibly unconvincing ways and take insane actions to overcome them (poor little Jimmy). Interesting ideas, I suppose, but as it gets less space opera-y and more an attempt to say something about the spirit of humanity it's clear that Chalker by this point in his writing had some distinctly odd feelings about that spirit.

Ah, well, I remembered being disappointed as a kid and the reread didn't do anything to change that.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! It is brilliant and amazing. Chalker was definitely one of the best fantasy writers out there. I can't help but give it four stars. The way he uses religious mythology and ties it into math and science is always fascinating.

A couple of the characters don't end up in places where I would have imagined and I was disappointed in that because Chalker takes a very anti-alien stance that I'm not sure I understand and I certainly don't agree with. And in some ways I felt emotionally disconnected from the characters which also surprised me.

But it is good and definitely worth reading.

[John Sorensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was amazed at the complexity, richness and depth and fun of the series. This was the third book. The trilogy is incredibly ambitious. 3 different inter-galactic cultures, with 3 different core organizational paradigms for each culture create teams, one team per culture of 5-7 people each. This book covers how the teams are formed. The sheer number of characters, different paradigms and personalities was just amazing. The plot is further enriched by different members of each team being able to communicate telepathically. Absolutely loved the series, this book, and the creativity Chalker displayed.

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A satisfying finish to the trilogy. I remember when I first read it years ago I was somewhat surprised / disappointed by how it went, but at that point it had taken me a while to get hold of a copy, and thus was a reasonable gap between reading book 2 and 3. Reading the trilogy straight this time, I can see how much of what happens in book 3 was a continuation of the prior books, and hinted at in them. It is quite metaphysical, and more suspense than action, but held together very well and was in the end a good read.

[Mike Habiby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This concluding novel of the trilogy is Jack Chalker at his best, intertwining math, hard and social science, philosophy and fantastic feats of imagination into yet another look into the heart of the Universe. These are always Jack's themes, seen in the Well World series as well as most of his other works. A fine conclusion for this trilogy. Having finished it again, I put it near the top of his works.

[Benjamin Plume · Rating 4 out of 5]

The concluding volume in this series sometimes lacks the raw action that made the previous two books so compelling, but it makes up for it with an intellectual smorgasbord. Healthy discussions of religion, philosophy, magic, science, history, anthropology, and more are woven throughout, and Chalker's mastery at creating fascinating aliens is showcased.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this book read like the climax of a book: fast, tense and consequential. Slowed down a little bit, then went straight off into left field with a science fiction version of a meeting with God, followed by an ending that seemed a bit too deus-ex-machina.

[WJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fitting end to the trilogy, if a bit light in the wrapping up department. Overall this book and series The Quintara Marathon was an awesome epic journey into science fiction. This happens to be one of my favorite authors and series written by Jack L. Chalker....

[Jsmoker]

Very interesting book. Very vivid and lude, though so the light hearted beware. This book put the book Faust (the original) on my list of books to read.

[Nuranar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weirdly engaging. The theology of it all was really fascinating, and honestly, the story was quite good. The trilogy was slow getting started, but the pace kept increasing and never slowed down.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

By a wide margin, the absolute worst book I have ever attempted to read. It's almost awe-inspiring.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ending left a little to be desired.

[Don LaVange · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really enjoyed this series. This was the last of the series.

[Aaron Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't remember if I finished this or not. Doesn't matter.

[Howard]

8

[Mark Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited to see how this would turn out. This did feel like it was kind of rushed at the end.