Souls in the Great Machine

Greatwinter #1

by Sean McMullen

The great Calculor of Libris was forced to watch as Overmayor Zarvora had four of its components lined up against a wall and shot for negligence. Thereafter, its calculations were free from errors, and that was just as well-for only this strangest of calculating machines and its two thousand enslaved components could save the world from a new ice age.

And all the while a faint mirrorsun hangs in the night sky, warning of the cold to come.

In Sean McMullen's glittering, dynamic, and exotic world two millennia from now, there is no more electricity, wind engines are leading-edge technology, librarians fight duels to settle disputes, steam power is banned by every major religion, and a mysterious siren "Call" lures people to their death. Nevertheless, the brilliant and ruthless Zarvora intends to start a war in space against inconceivably ancient nuclear battle stations.

Unbeknownst to Zarvora, however, the greatest threat to humanity is neither a machine nor a force but her demented and implacable enemy Lemorel, who has resurrected an obscene and evil concept from the distant Total War.

Souls in the Great Machine is the first volume of Sean McMullen's brilliant future history of the world of Greatwinter

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Steampunk, Fantasy, Post Apocalyptic, Science Fiction Fantasy, Dystopia

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Dr. Sean McMullen, author of the acclaimed cyberpunk/steampunk Greatwinter Trilogy, is one of Australia's top Science Fiction and Fantasy authors.

Winning over a dozen awards (including multiple Analog Readers Awarda and a Hugo Award finalist), his work is a mixture of romance, invention and adventure, populated by strange and dynamic characters. The settings for Sean's work range from the Roman Empire, through Medieval Europe, to cities of the distant future. He is a musician, medievalist, star gazer, karate instructor, felineophile, and IT manager.

Reviews

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 Stars
Video Review: https://youtu.be/TK6ITg3Q_SM

I absolutely loved the grim post-apocalyptic story that explores a dark regressed world. The setup is bleak, and the resulting human experience reflects that. This world portrays a world where women are treated poorly, which is often hard to read but makes sense in the context of the story. Given the way this one ends, I am dying to jump into the continuation of this story.

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pros: McMullen has a lot of really great ideas. This is a book set 200 years after the apocalypse, caused by a mysterious siren call that started luring people into the sea, leading to nuclear war and the placement of satellites that sweep the earth with electromagnetic pulses from time to time, prohibiting the use of electronics. The story, then, concerns the southern part of Australia (I think-the geography is hazy at best), where they have a produced a new calculating machine that uses people as binary components. Oh also an ancient net of nanomachines has started constructing a mirror in the sky to prevent global warming. This is a holdover from the pre-Apocalyptic world, of course, but I forget why it has started up again 2000 years in the future.

Cons: McMullen doesn't have a clue what to do with any of these ideas. None of them are fleshed out to any degree and their implications are never really explored. The characters (such as they are) and the plot (such as it is) clearly exist only to propel the reader along as McMullen careens from one idea to the next, which are often clearly just crammed into the narrative as he thought of them for the first time. (My favorite example of this: around page 300, it's explained that some people have bird DNA [don't ask:]. From there for the next 15 pages or so, one of the main characters is described as having bushy or feathery hair on just about every paragraph. This had never been mentioned in the prior 300 pages).

It's hard to convey here how poorly organized and structured this book is. Characters fall in and out of love immediately. They betray one another for the thinnest of reasons even more often (one such betrayal, toward the end of the book, isn't explained at all, as far as I could see). Pages will be spent on the most boring minutiae, and then McMullen will oftenhandedly reference the passage of 5 years. (or, another favorite example, after the first inexplicable betrayal that the plot hinges on, two characters ride into the desert to search for a third... and then the chapter is over and it's 5 years later and one is a monk and the other is a warlord). I could go on and on. There were a lot of head-scratchers in this book... and there weren't supposed to be.

Oh, one other thing: when I started this, I was stoked on the fact that all of the main characters were strong and sympathetic females... until he started writing about their breasts as their main identifying characteristics (not kidding). Then by the end it turned out that the philandering man was the main hero/character after all. Bah.

The more I write the more I'm convinced that this deserved 1 star, but I really enjoyed a few bits of it and I'm feeling generous. Let's pretend it's a 1.5

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just couldn't go on. My first dnf in ages.
At about page 300 I started to get embarrassed at how awful the interaction between characters was. Especially the female characters, who by the way, started out as strong and resourceful and ended up standing in front of a mirror naked and scoring themselves out of 10. At some stage, it felt like the author stopped writing and his 15 year old son took over and suddenly all the powerful nation leading women suddenly needed to compare breasts and work out who they could shag.

Often the story was all over the place and you can see where ideas pop into the authors head and he would write something and you be like "where the hell did that come from?". Or the part where a character from another tribe, takes a liking to our 'once was a tough female, now a jilted embittered woman wanting revenge' and knowing that she can't speak his language proceeds to tell his story to her for three days, constantly saying "oh, if only you could understand me my pretty one" and of course she can, so we get all that story told to us in this 'fascinating way'.

I marked it for 2 stars because I actually think the author as a really really good idea for a story. I thought I had unearthed a gem after the first 100 pages, but alas it falls off a cliff.

[Daniel Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stop me if you've heard this one before: in Australia in the distant, post-apocalyptic future, a continent-wide Siren-like Call wreaks havoc on society, and electricity is banned by EMP orbital platforms. But an ingenious and ruthless librarian reinvents computers by using prisoners as components. With it, she...

I'll stop here, not because anything in Souls in the Great Machine has been done before, but because discovering all the crazy and ingenious ideas put forth in this book are part of the thrill. The setting of the novel is a true original, and reading about ideas like Mirrorsun and the Calculor is a huge part of the appeal of this quirky, innovative SF story.

The other reason to read this book, though, is the characters. They're all interesting, fully realized, and fun to watch grow and change. A big point in favor of the book is the large number of strong female characters on display. Yeah, there's a lot of sex, and you'll learn way too much about the female characters' breasts by the end of it, but it's really great to see these crazy, strong, passionate women take center stage. In a world where even full-length SF novels don't pass the Bechdel Test, that's a pretty significant achievement. Ah, but don't think the guys get shortchanged: John Glasken, a sort of male take on the oversexed bimbo trope, for instance, is actually a pretty great character in his own right, and he went from infuriating to adorable over the span of a few hundred pages. I'm surprised I'm praising him, because after a hundred pages I just wanted him to die a violent death.

If there's something to fault with this novel, it's the structure itself. Although the beginning and end are pretty strong and tightly plotted, things get real messy in the middle part. Characters get all over the place, they change quickly and sometimes mysteriously, and the plot gets bogged down with some minor side-plots that don't really go anywhere. (Having made it to the end, I still don't care about railroad gauge differences, dammit.) This is made worse by the fact that Souls in the Great Machine was originally published as two books in Australia; the cut in the middle, signified by a four-year gap, is pretty jarring as part of a continuous story.

But although it feels as if McMullen just threw all the pieces in the air near the middle of his book, everything falls into place neatly for a satisfying ending. Most of the big questions about the setting get answered in a satisfactory manner, though the most intriguing ones are reserved for the sequel. This was a satisfying read, with some never-before-seen SF ideas, and I'm excited to read the sequels.

[Duncan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a test of patience for me, I have to say. I feel bad saying that since the book was well-reviewed and a lot of effort obviously went into it but for whatever reason, I kept think "Well, this is certainly a list of events. And the characters certainly do have names. I guess it technically qualifies as a book ." Some really neat concepts (I loved the idea of The Call) but the book was so dry. I spite-read the home stretch. Just when I though it was winding down to a conclusion, it'd skip ahead a year and introduce new characters. It felt eternal, like maybe I was reading something that was just being generated by an AI in an endless scroll that would never have an ending. Like I was being pranked. I ended up reading it to my daughter to help her go to sleep quicker. Obviously, I'm in the minority. Not saying it's a bad book, just saying that it did not hit the mark with me. But see for yourself. That's just me.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a wonderful feeling, re-reading a novel you loved as a teenager and finding it lives up to your memories entirely. Indeed, I think 'Souls in the Great Machine' was formative of my sci-fi tastes. There is so much to love about it! For one thing, it's the first in a trilogy yet stands alone brilliantly. Moreover, the characters, plot, and world-building are all distinctive and fantastic.

If I had to pick my absolute favourite feature, it would have to be the characterisation. The women are ambitious, driven, competent, intelligent, machiavellian, ruthless, sometimes vengeful, and in charge. I adore Highliber Zarvora; few other protagonists can compare to her. Lemorel makes an excellent antagonist and her motivations are a neatly gender-swapped version of many heroic male characters. In her case, this shows the hollowness of, "I'll burn down the world because my romantic partner was taken from me". Other characters have also been harmed or lost people they love, but don't launch a continental war about it. Although I still respect Lemorel's skill as a warlord. Her final showdown with Dolorian is incredible. Darien is another brilliant female character, whose disability is cleverly shown but does not define her. I should also mention Theresla and Jemli, both delightful. The friendships, loyalties, and enmities between these women are absolutely central to the book. By contrast, the male characters are essentially himbos; easily manipulated even if clever, punished for treating women badly, and mostly there to be love interests. The main two, Glasken and Ilyrie, repeatedly learn painful lessons until they respect women properly. I'm not sure I noticed as a teenager that several forms of polyamory are shown, carefully distinguished from cheating.

That brings me to the world-building. 'Souls in the Great Machine' is set in Australia, two thousand years in the future. An ice age has been and gone, orbiting satellites fry any attempts at using electricity, and whales have taken revenge on humanity via the Call. This essentially mind-controls any mammals above a certain size to walk into the sea, where they are eaten by sharks. The massive impact this has on society, the economy, technology, and even theology is cleverly explored. It made me jump a little to read that the Call began in 2021! As electrical power is off the table and there is an ongoing taboo against steam engines, machines use ingenious forms of renewable energy. Trains are powered by wind or human pedalling and are run by engineers still obsessed with Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Great Machine of the title is a human-powered computer that is central to the story. This incredible technology cannot be kept secret, despite best efforts, and the book chronicles the revolution it unleashes. More specifically, I love the fact that librarians run this world, fight duels over any professional or personal disputes, yet also guard what books remain from earlier times.

Finally, the plot is fast-paced and exciting. It covers a long period of time, a wide area, and a sprawling cast of characters, yet flows beautifully and keeps up the pace such that 600 pages seem too brief. There are moments of delightful farce, as well as tragic hubris, extreme drama, and thrilling discovery. For several hundred pages it is a war narrative that adeptly balances the epic and the personal, the political and the technological, the brutal and the exciting. Basically, this novel is just what I want from escapist comfort reading. Few writers hit on a combination of character, plot, and world-building that suits my tastes so well. I recall not loving the latter two books in the trilogy quite as much, but that doesn't matter. As a stand-alone novel, 'Souls in the Great Machine' remains one of my all time favourites.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts out so spectacularly strong that the end can't match the promise. You have a post-apocalyptic, Australian, steam-punk novel set in a well-crafted world. The characters and narrative just can't keep up with the setting.

Spoilers follow.

One of the more unfortunate is on the book's cover. Knowing Lemorel Milderellen and Zarvora Cybeline will end up at odds with each other prevents the reader from fully committing to empathizing with Lemorel (although, to McMullen's credit, I came close). The start of the war would have had a lot more impact if one hadn't know from the start that it was coming.

In Chapter 12, titled Clocksmith, where Jemli Milderellen bumps into John Glasken, it finally struck me that much of the book feels like some clockwork game board shuffling pieces to just where they have to be to drive the story forward. This might even have been done by design (so I probably should have picked up one it earlier).

On a side note, I did tire of reading about Glasken's sexual prowess. It was one thing when this was just part of his character; it went over the top when his libido was so powerful that it allowed him, alone among all humans, to resist the Call. A similar comment applies to Dolorian Jelvira's breasts.

While trying to find Dolorian's last name just now, I stumbled onto the fact that this book is an amalgam of two earlier works. That explains a lot about the way the book reads.

my favorite quote: "'You need to look back at old problems every so often, even if it hurts. They always diminish with time.'"

[Iain Coggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat foolishly, I read a number of reviews on this book before starting it. I did so despite knowing that I already wanted to read it, and that it had been on my reading list for a number of years. Reviewers give a lot of fours, primarily because of weak character development. Having read such reviews, I found myself looking for this problem as I read (hence the aforementioned foolishness). Truth be told, McMullen does have some weaknesses in this regard, but I would say his real weakness is a lack of description in places. At times I wanted him to elaborate or give fuller descriptions. My complaint here is persnickety, however. This is a great book! Very long, very involved and I finished it in a little over a month. I simply love the world McMullen has created. His plot is very original and there is nothing predictable about the story. Although he employs many techniques of his genre, that is only because he is writing in that vein. One is continually surprised by developments and all loose ends are tied up. He also sets up the next book in the series, The Miocene Arrow, which I can barely wait to start. A perfect blend of humor, adventure and thoughtful inquiry, Souls in the Great Machine is an engrossing, very fun read!

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost gave up on this book. It just started slow for me and then, somewhere around 150 or 200 pages in, what a blast! Don't know why; maybe I took a while to get used to the world McMullen has created. Good post-apocalyptic sci-fi without the depressing edge that seems to pervade that genre. \

I always loved the idea about a society governed by a library, or rather, a Library and fancied some day writing a story about that myself. McMullen beat me to it and did a better job than I ever could. And this one is nice and edgy morally, but naive technologically, combining steampunk, windpunk, ethanol-punk, woodpunk, you name it. Skips ahead in time a lot, especially in the point where the originally published as two novels story breaks. Lots of humor, some action and, like a lot of good sci-fi, dirty (without being porny).

[Ryandake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daniel wrote a great review of it here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

as for me, this is my sixth or seventh time to read this trilogy, and it is as awesome this time as it has been for all the previous.

if your idea of great sf is of sf with truly innovative ideas, wonderful plotting and characterization, and thoroughly memorable characters, you have come to the right place: Souls in the Great Machine has all of these. and this is only the on-ramp to a far more complex and involving future world.

this trilogy deserves all of the accolades given to such as The Lord of the Rings, which in my opinion it far outshines.

[korty · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique and wonderful read. The worldbuilding in this book is stunning. The author creates a world and the cultures that populate it with such vividness that you feel like you have actually been there. There is one awkward aspect where a character we had gotten to know well in the first half disappointingly gets pushed to the background in the latter half, but it is not enough to lower my rating.

[Liv Bailey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came into this serious with a hopeful positive outlook. The description of the novel got me hooked and I was looking forward to reading it. Out of the other reviews I had read the book seemed worth the read. Sadly, I was very disappointed. Right away the book throws a bunch of in terms and I was very confused. The book did not spend enough time explaining the many terms in its universe. I could not keep track. To add to that the names of all the lingo, characters, and positions were very hard to pronounce and to even remember. The book jumped from place to place making it even harder to follow. I was hoping that the more that I read I would better understand the world that Sean McMullen had built. I was wrong the more I read the more perplexed it got. I was able to pick up few meanings here and there but would always have to go back to the description to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I had even checked to be positive that I had gotten the first book in the series to see if I could answer why I was so confused. There would be many times where I would have to take breaks reading only a few pages because of how complicated this read was. I had tried many times to look up forums in hopes that some fans could better explain what was going on in all of this chaos. Sadly the book was published in 1999 and the fanbase seems to be non-existant for the most part. I would not recommend this to a reader unless you are a heavy sci-fi fan and are willing to sit down for a good amount of time trying to read this complicated book.

[Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically a fantasy novel with a post-apocalyptic veneer, set in south-eastern Australia (but it may as well have been anywhere) two thousand years after the collapse of civilisation, with society now having climbed back up to a semi-industrial scale of technology. There’s some interesting stuff in here (the Call is a particularly great concept) but it gets deeply bogged down in a pretty uninteresting story of politics and power – including a war with no apparent catalyst – and endless pages of faux engineering chatter about the human-powered calculator, semaphore telegraph and wind-powered trains. (I never want to read the words “beamflash” or “paraline” again.) It’s also one of those SFF books which unfortunately feels like it was written by a horny teenager; the female characters aren’t badly written (apart from the one whose breasts get mentioned every time she appears) but they all have a habit of jumping into bed for no-strings sex with every male character they encounter. Overall, a few neat ideas stretched out to make a badly bloated, overlong book which I’m glad to be finished with.

[Reet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liu,Cixin may have gotten the idea for a computer made up of human components from this author.

This book had the potential to be a lot better, especially because women were the Overlords. But the dude just could not resist his breast-envy, and thus turned this fairly awesome imaginative sci-fi into a teenage boy's book.

[L · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Souls" is a mix of interesting ideas, imaginative societies/cultures, war/battles, and unlikable characters. I quickly tired of the wars/battles, which I don't generally like anyhow and, in this case, found inexplicable. Why were two key female leads going to war at all? I never did understand. Moreover, there was not a single character about whom I gave a damn.

[Daniel Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have had the second book in this series on my shelves for over 10 years and have had the first for about 18 months just staring at me. I finally read it, and it was certainly original. The plot lines in this novel are complex and varied, taking place over about 20 years all told. This book imagines a future in which humanity has tried some radical technological advances to deal with blossoming crises around the turn into the 21st century that end up devastating our civilization and changing its shape permanently. In this expansive, well-thought-out world McMullen has crafted for us, an initially unknown disaster has occurred a couple thousand years in the past which results in a future with no electricity, and in fact no technology higher than the level of wind power. This results in some really interesting innovations that McMullen creates to sustain the slowly recovering civilization in Australia: wind-powered and pedal-powered trains, a primitive heliostat communications network intriguingly named "beamflash," and an emerging computing and encryption technology that begins to reshape the society from which it emerges.

At times, this book was awesome. I really appreciated McMullen's attention to detail in the "Australica" of the future and the realistic behavior of the society and the individual members of it (mostly) to the Big Idea he's chosen to explore. This plot is exceptionally broad, almost to a fault. I think this is a consequence of the continent- and world-wide scope McMullen was trying to work with. It was impactful and at times high-octane, but just as often I found myself reading about the minutiae of wartime telegraph communication and the implications of signal interception, corruption, or delay. While this did tread new territory for me, it seemed to drag on longer than I had patience for at times, and took the impact out of at least one otherwise tense scene. Another thing that unfortunately dragged on too long for my taste was the book itself. There was a point about 3/4 of the way in that felt like a natural ending for me, but the author and editors chose to continue to set up the rest of the series for another 100+ pages. While interesting things happened in these pages, they felt rushed through and condensed. For example, at one point eleven years - more than half of the span of the entire plot - is eclipsed in one paragraph break in the last twenty pages of the book. I know this isn't unheard of in an epilogue, but in this instance it felt odd.

Similarly, the characters' actions and motivations were often muddy and sometimes forced to fit the timing of the plot or provide a backstop for specific events. A couple times I found myself rolling my eyes at "chance" encounters or wild changes in personality or allegiance that seemed too convenient. An example would be a time when a character randomly encounters another main character's sibling in a private train car. The odds of this happening at this specific time and in these circumstances seem miniscule, and it sure does provide a good motivation for a conflict the author wanted to shoehorn into the last pages of the book. While these plot devices individually were quite compelling, they just didn't seem to flow well together and it's a little difficult to articulate why. I feel like if I look at most of the individual pieces of this book by themselves, they're components of a story I should really enjoy - with one exception I'll get into shortly. Somehow, when they're assembled the whole feels like it's missing some sense of continuity. Perhaps it's the rapid reforming of characters' mentality, loyalties, and motivations that happens several times. At least once this happens in the span of about a sentence. Perhaps it's the seemingly disjointed jumps in time throughout the story. Sometimes these are not clearly delineated in a character's monologue or by the narrator, and it left me confused at times. Perhaps the sense of discontinuity stems from the individually impactful events of the book not feeling impactful when taken together (e.g. a capital city being taken, retaken, and taken yet again by different factions).

A strong positive for this book was the sense of mystery that was introduced by having this budding civilization growing on top of the ashes of an old and imperfect civilization that feels very familiar to the reader. There are secrets hidden in ancient books (librarians become very important because this civilization has no way to read or even comprehend digitally stored information from a prior age but some books have survived), technologies revived from wrecked museums and scavenged and reverse-engineered from ruins. There are interesting new cultures, religions, and traditions that feel as though they make sense in the world from which they arise, and there are interesting, diverse and real-feeling characters. Above all this (literally) hangs the spectre of a potential entity hinted at but never explicitly mentioned among the populace. These elements were worked skillfully into the plot and distributed in a way that kept this otherwise steampunk-feel book riding the line with science fiction. I really enjoyed watching this group of surviving humans slowly rediscovering some major engineering breakthroughs, as well as the logical impacts of these advances as thought of by the author.

I had some issues with the structuring of this book and some errors that bugged me more than they should have. My main issue, however, is with the characters. This problem admittedly diminished the further in I got, but at first I felt as though I had nobody to root for. Of the potential protagonists one had chosen to ruin a life and force someone close to her into a life of slavery for vengeance. She then callously ruins or ends other lives for greed or power and her story takes off in wild directions from there which I won't spoil for the reader. Another essentially engages in a large kindapping / hostage / slavery scheme for her own power-hungry ends which she ends up twisting into some version of what she considers altruism. A third is a lying womanizer who doesn't seem to have a bar below which he won't sink. None of these characters are palatable, much less likeable (at least to me). The author does a great job of making these folks change and grow, but their change starts too late for me and long after the bad taste of their previous impressions has sunk in. All three of these aforementioned characters grow with their experiences, but I never found myself really liking them or wishing they'd win. I did feel myself rooting for the growing culture still trying to right itself 2000 years after disaster, but the moments where I got to cheer on these tenacious folks felt too far between. This, I believe, would've been helped by condensing the book in general in some places. There were some inconsistencies, typos, and logic errors that led to my feeling as though this book was a bit jagged to read, but I don't want to nitpick too tightly or be too negative of a book that I'll admit I did end up enjoying more than I felt frustrated by. These were mostly somewhat small things like the author describing two objects as being on the right in a line of three when one is clearly meant to be described as on the left. These are quite minor in the grand scheme of the plot, but they did pull me out of the story and immersion to try to parse what I had just read. Another thing I found pretty hard to swallow was the casual and offhanded revelation that a character can talk to, and in a limited way control animals. No explanation for this gift or the sudden admission of it is given to the reader, and it felt very tacked on for something that ended up being pretty important. Added on top of this is some interspecies interactions that don't really make sense based on which species are doing the interacting. I can't be less vague than that without some major spoilers, unfortunately.

I think folks who like world-building, expansive plots that remain focused on 3-5 pivotal characters will enjoy this. A caveat to that is these readers must have more patience for some of the grainier details of infrastructure and warfare tactics than I have. All in all, this book alternated quite a bit between frustrating, insightful, realistic, unbelievable, fast-paced, glacial, dirty, and beautiful. I am going to read the next one because the plot lines hinted at in the denouement are interesting enough to me to want to see where they go and I truly believe this author has a gift for description and character development. I hope he makes some different choices in this next book with those characters, but either way I'm intrigued and want to see where this goes.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in August 2004.

There are plenty of post-apocalyptic novels, and plenty of science fiction about computers, but Souls in the Great Machine is the first story I have read which combines the two. Set about seventeen hundred years from now, following a nuclear winter, Souls in the Great Machine is about the effects of the development of a new form of a religiously proscribed machine, the computer. Because electronic equipment has become unusable (due to still functioning military satellites which destroy any detected electrical circuits), the components are men and women who perform the operations basic to the electronic computer of today by hand. The machine is slow compared to one using microchip technology, but powerful enough to bring prominence to the small state in which it is secretly constructed.

Souls in the Great Machine builds on well worn science fiction ideas in an original manner, and by centring on the Calculor itself becomes fascinating (at least for the first two thirds; the last two hundred pages of this novel, describing desert warfare, is more commonplace and not so interesting). The scenario is influenced by writers like Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling - despite the massive differences in the technology depicted, the closest novels in tone to Souls in the Great Machine that I can think of are The Diamond Age and The Difference Engine - as well as post apocalyptic novels, particularly A Canticle for Leibowitz, which also deals with the relationship between technology and religion. The desert warfare could come from Dune (which also, of course, has a religious prohibition on the development of computing machines), or a number of fantasy novels and the use of railways is (perhaps more superficially) like Pavane or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Out of such influences, McMullen has forged a novel distinctively his own.

Souls in the Great Machine has flaws; as mentioned, it tails off in its final third; and it is also lacking in characterisation. It is as though the nature and effects of the Calculor are not just the main interest of the novel, but so much its focus that everything else not directly related to the topic is underwritten. For a genre novel, it is dense and that makes it a slow read, and the effect of the poor end segment is to make the reader wonder whether the effort has been worth it. I would say that for the earlier parts of Souls in the Great Machine, the whole is just worth it; enough for me to look out for his other books, some of which are also set in the same world.

[Jenny Chase · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think a younger me might have loved this book. It's got everything, most especially some very clever worldbuilding and some good lines ("people need to know that soldiers who love life are no less brave than those who love killing" stands out simply for being very late in the book), and I liked the female-character-driven plot. I love the world that has clearly been through several forms of catastrophe and desperate measures, and is now a low-energy civilisation, but a civilisation nonetheless.

Current me merely liked it, because having everything, it was simply too much and too long. Did the librarians have to be duellists? Did there have to be quite so many romantic complications? Lemorel, a hugely pivotal character, was introduced with great sympathy and then... buggered off and I missed the point where she turned into Zarvora's enemy because frankly the love affairs were distracting and random. I might have preferred it as several, shorter books each focused on one angle, though I see the value in all the ideas together.

[Tasula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in Australia after a cataclysmic event killed all technology and millions by cold weather. A young woman who was studying Mirrorsun (a silver band in the skies) and the Wanderers (spy satellites which destroy attempts at engines) designs in secret a computer (the Calculor) based on humans working a system of beads and levers. There are many interesting characters (e.g. Overliber Zarvora who challenges and shoots anyone standing in her way, Abbess Theresla who eats grilled mice on toast, John Glasken- an insatiable rake, mute Darien). There is a mysterious Call which sweeps over the land periodically, forcing people and large animals to walk south in a trance, until they die or fall into the ocean; so people call call tethers and warnings, so they can save themselves. A really fascinating story, which I just reread and reviewed today.

[Insert name here · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book can be a bit of a slog in places--this is not a Michael Crichton, fast-paced beach read, and I definitely felt like the writing can be tightened up--but the world-building is strange and beautiful and the story so distinct, unlike anything else I've read, that I solidly recommend it. It's especially noteworthy because this was written before the current renaissance in genre fiction injected some much-needed newness into SF&F--I think in many ways Sean McMullen spurred this renaissance by introducing originality into a somewhat stale field.

[Aneel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite good for the first hundred pages, then abandons its focus on interactions between characters and switches over into Big Picture mode. The book starts rapidly switching between characters and destroys their verisimilitude. Characters swap allegiances and opinions for the sole purpose of making the giant Tech plot work out, and everything starts feeling heavily scripted. Interesting ideas, but, in the final analysis, an unsatisfying read.

[Chris Reznor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sci-fi story set in a post apocalypic where computers don't technically exist. Instead, giant calculation machines are staffed by human slaves doing the math. The use of 'lo-tech' in the story is particularly interesting. Flintlock pistols, pedal trains and communication networks of 'beamflash towers'? Not a typical sci-fi read but still very much worth a read.

[Renata · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has a fascinating, seeable, steampunk world and interesting characters, but they are not developed enough to keep me hooked, and the writing absolutely plods. I couldn't get past the first 5 chaps because the writing put me to sleep! Two more volumes?! Please, not unless the writer improves on his craft.

[John Sundman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't finish, though for a while I felt guilty about that. But then I read a bunch of well-written 2-star reviews here and they captured most of my experience in reading this book: Pros: some really intriguing & original concepts. Cons: Absence of everything else that is required for a good novel.

Also, an awesome title. Credit where credit is due.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this series 15 or 20 years ago and remembered liking it very much, so I read it again. It’s hard to put down. The world created by the author is crazy imaginative, the characters are interesting, and the twisting plot does not disappoint. But this futuristic world of wind trains, mysterious calls, and strange things in the sky is amazing. One of the most memorable books I’ve read.

[Jacen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather over written story it could have been have the length a lot of the time seemed to repeat itself or jump forward just because, most of the characters were rather wooden they all seemed to be defined by the function they served to the plot not as characters and individuals themselves.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is nutty, but I love it. Coolest title ever.

[Cynthisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book Log note: "Great world-building, but needs a good, hard edit.")

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's all a bit contrived of you don't just settle in an enjoy the characters

[Garciamrc7 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is wonderful.