Feed Your Interest

This is what I’ve been distracted by recently. (Amongst other things.)
The Accord by Keith Brooke had a cover recommendation by Peter Hamilton (of Dreaming Void fame). Since I can’t remember ever having seen a cover recommendation by Hamilton before (I’m sure others can prove me to have a bad memory), it immediately caught my eye.

And the book is good.
It is an interesting idea. Well, it’s an old idea, with a different sort of a twist to it. The concept of immortality through digitization has been around for a while. Morgan’s Altered Carbon (yes, I know it is still lacking an image and a description. yes, I intend to get on to it. eventually…) was the most recent that I really loved.
Anyway, here, the Accord is Brooke’s style of immortality. It is a warehoused copy of a person. Upon the person’s death, his most recent warehoused copy is uploaded into the Accord. In effect, the Accord is where people go after they die… It is a man-made heaven, but accessible to all who can pay for a warehousing service, as opposed to those who have (or don’t have) a religious bent.

The Accord is interesting. It is named such as the scenery that the people in it see, the rules, the occupations, are all the result of the majority subconscious vote. So to a large degree, because people have pre-conceived perceptions of what their life is like, it will continue in a similar fashion in the Accord.
But at the same time, for those who have longed to be something different in live, the Accord will allow them to do so as long as the majority of the subconscious-es don’t mind…
And of course, since everybody has the perception that the afterlife is a place where people can’t die… There is immortality for all…

All that having been said, there is the actual story that I’ve yet to cover.
Basically, the creator of the Accord (if it can ever be traced to one person) is a gentleman by the name of Noah… He has indulged in an affair with the wife of an extremely possessive politician. The possessiveness leads to a murder, and Noah and Priscilla find themselves dead (alive?) in the Accord. And still being chased by the man who killed them, as his jealousy and anger knows no bounds.

The tale is told in a measured pace from multiple PoVs. Don’t expect Hamilton style action and speed. It’s not stupidly slow like Dune either. The pacing is really just right for Brooke’s style of story-writing.

The political wrangling, the techy discussions and explorations are well done, blend in with the rest of the tale and add to the overall atmosphere.

It is a book well worth reading!

After finishing Temporal Void, I just had to go back and re-read some of Hamilton’s other stuff. Have I mentioned how stunningly-crafted his stories are?
They are filled with epic ensembles of characters that strangely do not blur into one… They maintain very distinct, very unique characters that continue to develop through out the books. And eventually events will bring them all together, leaving you (well, me at least) with this sense of having travelled through the galaxy’s most amazing social revolutions…
After which I realize I’ve just finished another one of Hamilton’s books and now need to wait for him to stop slacking around and to deliver the next…

Fallen Dragon is unique amongst his books thus far as it is a stand-alone. There are no prequels, there are no sequels (yet and not likely ever). While some lament this as being indicative of a lack of his customary depth, I say “hey, at least you don’t have to wait for the next book!”

And the idea that it is lacking in depth and scope is one that is flawed anyway. The events of the book span from Earth to Thallspring. A colonized planet many light-years away, and one that has been the target of the most recent asset realization of the ZB Corporation…

Asset Realization is interesting.
The basic idea is that colonies cost a *lot* of money to get started and to get going. And that doesn’t include the cost of space travel, which in itself is also a very significant amount. It is for this reason that the majority of corporations have actually stopped investing in colonization entirely. It costs a lot, and due to the distances involved, there is no way for the corporations to profitably invest more time and finances to realize a profit. Ultimately, that investment (and the colony’s debt to the corporation) are written off as a loss on the corporation’s books…

Long term, what the corporations do instead, is 10-20 years down the road, when the colony has itself up and running, is self-sustaining and using its own resources to manufacture finished products, it sends its fleet and military forces to the colony, and claim a large portion of those finished products as a portion of its assets.
Since there was no cost to the corporation in creating those products, their spacefleet and military already existed, every single one of those products has a zero manufacturing cost, and all sales of the products are immediately profitable.

The side effect of course, is that in the midst of that realization, they tend to piss off the populance, they tend to wreck economic havoc with the colony planet, and they tend to get innocent people hurt.

The main character is a fairly nice guy by the name of Lawrence Newton who happens to be the squad leader in the military force that is sent into Thallspring to maintain law and order during the realization.

The narration takes a slightly round-about view of events. Showing the events as they are occurring “now” on Earth and on Thallspring, as well as showing the events that led Lawrence to his current occupation and state of mind.
And yes, there *are* other equally interesting characters through the book, not the least being a girl whose DNA has been rewritten to make her more than human, and a guy who is a product of a long line of on-going genetic experiments back on Earth…

It’s one of my favourite books by Hamilton, and I’d whole-heartedly recommend it to any reader of the sci-fi genre.

Ok, so now I have read Temporal Void.

Actually, I read it a fair few days ago as a way to procrastinate. The problem with reading a book like that to procrastinate, is that that “10 minutes - just a few pages” tends to turn into “10 hours - one book later…”. How time flies when you’re stuck in the temporal void! hahahaha… (Sorry, I couldn’t resist…)

It was good. I loved it. It was a lot more focused on Edeard and his events in the Void, but to a certain degree, that was an expected move on Hamilton’s part. Afterall, it *is* the second book in the trilogy, so you would expect it to set things up for the grand finale. Yes, it was a stronger second book than Neutronium Alchemist. Tighter told, the meanderings were less aimless. Yes, I know it’s a bit strange a thing to say since we can’t tell how useful the events of the second book were until we’ve read the 3rd… But you also get a sense that there is a point and a reason to everything.

The raw strength and power of the Waterwalker is really brought to reality in this book. There are moments where it seems like the whole deus ex machina resolution he had in The Naked God might make a reappearance, but then the costs of Edeard’s reality bending is shown, and you wonder if it is right and worth it.

The problem with trying to comment on a book is always “how much to give away”… Paula’s still running around playing (super) detective, Ozzie’s still out there trying to find the Second Dreamer, Kazimir’s going crazy trying to prevent the aliens - who understandably blame the humans for the devourament phase - from attacking the humans - who themselves are trying to blow each other up in an effort to enter the Void. Troblum is unbelievably still alive and running free. And the Second Dreamer is off in her own little world…

If you liked the first book, this 2nd part of the trilogy continues to deliver the amazing depth and breadth of epic sci-fi that you’d expect from Hamilton. ie: go read it.

Peter F Hamilton’s Temporal Void has just arrived!
It’s the second book in his Void trilogy (the first is The Dreaming Void). I’ve got no idea what the second book is going to be about (or like), but if the first book were any indication, I suspect I’ll be reading it most of tonight and tomorrow and enjoying every single bit of it…
Come on in if you want it. Give us a call if you can’t make it in!

We did get a small amount of other books… The interesting ones are:
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
1634: The Baltic War by David Weber and Eric Flint
Nation by Terry Pratchett.

One other book that TONS of people have been waiting for and asking about: Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Yes, we’ve finally gotten it back in. No, we’re not expecting to run out anytime soon. Yes, we have regularly been wrong about that…