Book #8 Spin Control
Spin Control by Chris Moriarty(Spin book 2)
Arkady, a Syndicate construct and entomologist, is smuggled to Earth after a terraforming mission goes terribly wrong, looking for the highest bidder on the information he brought with him.
The plot of this novel is really hard to describe without spoiling a lot of things. Not that I actually found the plot interesting at all.
A huge problem for me was that the main characters from the first book, Cohen and Li, are only side characters here. One of the main attractions in the first book was their relationship, and the development of that in this book was not much to my liking. It's all from Cohen's point of view this time, and I'm not sure whether he really gets it. I can't say any more without spoilers (see cut).
In general, the book is a nice treatise on emergent intelligence and biological warfare, which luckily are interesting topics (to me). The author also presents them in an intelligent way, so that held my interest. But just barely.
The main character is a bit clueless and bland. I never really warmed to any of the other new characters, either, and there was just too little of Cohen.
All in all, that added up to a boring book for me.
The best I can say is that the writing style is great. It was especially noticeable contrasted against the last book I read (which was so much better, plot-wise, but has a less intricate style than Moriarty's).
* The whole book is about Cohen whining about everyone leaving him, and he's right in some of them. Whether he's really right about Li, we never find out, since it's all from his POV. I still have hope that he's wrong, but... it's really hard to tell. He has a lot of neuroses.
* I hated with a passion the plot point of "The Game" in Cohen's base code. This robs him of a lot of identity and free will, which he finds just as terrible and impossible to fix as I did. I did not want him to "love" Li because she's a player in his game code. This almost ruined the whole relationship for me.
* Also, ow, ow, poor Li! The chess player's hand was a nice touch, but it all felt so constructed compared to the huge world of Cohen's memories in the first book.
* I am not sure whether to like the fact that everything was set in Israel. It is a pretty good example for religious zeal, but I felt it was too constructed, like the rest of the book. In theory, those were all good writing choices, but they stayed sterile for me without characters I liked.
* I was interested in Arkady/Arkasha at first, but nothing ever comes of it, the relationship is only skimmed, and in the end Arkady even martyrs himself for his love. Meh. This did not go the way I wanted it to.
* I really missed the things that made the first book great: the spin theory, the aliens, different worlds (okay, there was Novalis, but it was all told in flashbacks from Arkady's very limited view). It just did not deliver on what I expected from it.
3 stars. I would actually like to give it less, just because it bored me. It's not a bad book, I was just disappointed by it.
1 - 5 stars - Brothers In Arms [DW]
2 - 3 stars - Rose Point [DW]
3 - 2 stars - Back to Sodom and Gomorrah [DW]
4 - 4 stars - First Among Sequels [DW]
5 - 5 stars - Ready Player One [DW]
6 - 3 stars - Treasure Island [DW]
7 - 4 stars - Ancillary Sword [DW]
8 - 3 stars - Spin Control [DW]
x-posted from dw (comments:
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