Sometimes when you read a book you can really tell that it is designed to be part of a trilogy. Even three quarters of the way through there wasn't really a major plot, it was all build up. But good build up, I really enjoyed it, the main character is an idiot everyman, the social environment involves a sensible critique of the successes and failures of communism and capitalism, and the science is believeable. Looking forward to reading the next part. ( )

I liked how everything came together in the end. Preferred the part of the story that was off-earth, and hope there will be more of this in future books. ( )

It's been a long time since I've read anything by this author and while I enjoyed what I read in the early 2K's I'm going to admit that MacLeod didn't entertain me as much as in the past. A lot of this boils down to how his quirky take on left-wing politics doesn't seem to have dated very well. As they say, the future isn't what it used to be! If I didn't have newer and shinier things calling to me I might have been more patient with this novel. ( )

Another Ken Macleod novel with alternating plotlines and an assumption that the reader will be fairly up to speed with Leftist politics, though not the same factions of the Left explored in the Fall Revolution novels. The near-future plotline in this novel starts out with a Soviet-dominated EU in the aftermath of World War Three (or is it Four? People have lost count) pitched against a fairly Republican and politically active USA, and the way things get confused when the Soviets suddenly announce First Contact with an alien species. It soon becomes clear that this First Contact isn't a new event; the near-future politics get rather thrown into disarray. In the middle of this, the protagonists, an Edinburgh-based hacker, an American freedom fighter (depending on whose viewpoint you adopt) working for West Coast tech money in Europe, and an American flying saucer pilot (no, this one's all our own work) get involved with the race to exploit the new technology the aliens are bringing us.

By the way, the aliens are microbial super-colonies; and they provide one link to the other plotline in the novel.

That plotline takes place in the future, on a distant world colonised from Earth. Humans live in close relations with saurs, reptilian aliens we would identify as Greys, but who have personalities that are both alien and relatable to our sensibilities. They also have a sense of humour that we definitely relate to. Other human-settled worlds also have working relationships with the saurs and the krakens, who navigate starships between the inhabited worlds of this part of the galaxy. The colony world, Mingulay, is well-drawn (though it's fairly clear that it's a thinly-disguised Hebridean island); there are hidden Ancestors, and First Families, and a castle, and pubs, and fishermen who go out in trawlers in oilskins; it all feels very Scottish. One of the First Families has a Great Work, and that will take the humans back to the stars, if they get to collect certain techie plot tokens...

This is very much the first book in a trilogy, although it doesn't end on a cliff-hanger as such and you can read it quite happily on its own. But it's as much about world-building as advancing the plot. And there's fun to be had sorting out how the two plot strands join up. So what starts out looking like another Ian Macleod novel with Scottish socialists plotting and swapping Leftie in-jokes with each other ends as something rather different. ( )

The story alternates between a planet, Mingulay, present, and Earth, several generations earlier. On Mingulay humans, saurs, and a couple of other species of more or less the same shape, opposable thumbs, eyes front, etc. live together fairly harmoniously, having been relocated at various times by "the gods" -- a culture of microorganisms (tiny and green, really tiny) for reasons no one understands. There are also kraken on this planet, yep, giant brilliant squid and how they interface with the little greens is never even broached. Only one spaceship has ever arrived independently at Mingulay from Earth, but the saurs, who live far longer than humans and turn up immediately when it arrives and remove the cosmonauts and leave the ship in orbit. These folk have a secret, well, several secrets one of them never really explained to my satisfactions. The Earth story follows Matt Cairns, a super programmer who gets snared into a conspiracy and ends up on the space station building what seems to be an FTL engine while all hell breaks loose on an Earth which appears to have an alternate history (all of Russia and Europe are essentially run by communists). In the Mingulay story a descendant of Matt - one, Gregor Cairns, has been tapped by his family to finish their great project, rediscovering the secret of the FTL drive and getting back on the spaceship. The plot itself was pretty good, but I wasn't much convinced by the love interest side story and there were just too many "convenient" little twists and turns for me -- basically too much stuff stuffed in and definitely wayyyy over my and 99% of even a decently informed cyber-public of the geeky bits. The Mingulay side of the tale was more lively, better paced. The Earth side was just too acronymy, complexly political and geeky. It had its moments and is kind of worth reading especially if you enjoy MacLeod and super geeky stuff. I see it is part of a series -- I won't kill myself seeking out the sequels, but I wouldn't spurn them entirely either. *** ( )