10/12 - Intending to skim-read this because, while I thought The Creative Fire was a disappointment, I need to see how the duology ends. Will try to limit posts regarding grammar or editing issues. I'm expecting them to be there, just like they were in the first book, but will try my best to ignore them in order to get through the book faster and make the review easier to write. To be continued...

13/12 - Well, I'm surprised! I actually liked this nearly as much as Edge of Dark, probably a 3.5 to its 4. The first 100 pages were pretty similar to The Creative Fire, but then when they arrived at The Diamond Deep my interest picked up and things became more exciting. The quality of editing was still the same - low for a published book - missing words (the, at, etc.), the wrong words (on instead of in, etc.), one character's name exchanged for another's, but like I said on Friday it's nothing I wasn't expecting. What I wasn't expecting was to find this easy to spend a whole day reading, I was expecting to struggle through it and skip bits here and there when I got bored. Ruby was much less irritating than she was in The Creative Fire and I was surprised by the way she died.

 It's actually revived my interest in the series and I'm thinking of reading Edge of Dark again so that the common characters, or their descendants, are still fresh in my mind and I can see the connections from this series to the next.

19/11 - I'm mostly enjoying this, but there are some irritations. Sometimes the writing is choppy, staccato. Cooper writes a few too many one or two word sentences, which pretty much go against the normal rules of sentence structure and grammar - a sentence is made up of a couple of specific things, a single word sentence simply can't contain all those things. Even worse is her persistence in calling a place common, as in "We're going to common", "I'll meet you at common", "Common was full of people". Why can she not use the word the? In this context 'common' is a room where people gather, rather like a living room. "I'm going to living room" is not a correct sentence, so why does Cooper think she can write it like that just because she's using an alternate word and it's set in a different galaxy than ours? You can't make up the rules of grammar to suit yourself (well you can, but people are going to notice and complain and lower their ratings of your book).

I don't really like Ruby. Even though she denies it to herself and Dayn, it does feel like she abandoned the rest of the grays to get what she wanted - the chance to sing and have everyone hear her (to me that feels more like an attention-grabbing teen than the disarmingly young leader of a revolution). She stirred the students up into an attempted revolution, but when everything went wrong she was the only one lucky enough to get a lifeline out of there. She seemed to forget about them pretty quickly, only having the occasional guilt pang. She's more focused on Fox and what he thinks of her and if he might be getting tired of her.

The cover does have nice artwork, but it doesn't show a very true representation of the Ruby that the book describes. The woman on the cover is way too old to be the 16/17-year-old that Cooper describes Ruby as, she looks like she's in her 30s (at least). At no point in time has Ruby, or anyone else, been described as having a gun. At the very beginning the Reds are said to carry stunners, but I have a hard time believing a gun that's nearly as long as Ruby is tall would be just a stunner. The gun in the picture is definitely a high powered weapon, a machine gun or the laser equivalent (depending on their technology).

Even though I'm still interested in continuing the book, I would be less interested if I hadn't read the first book in the spinoff series, Edge of Dark. I was in the minority that really enjoyed that book and so I want to finish this and the sequel in order to better understand Ruby, as she and the events that surround her were referenced a number of times in that book (and I assume, will be in the rest of the series). To be continued...

23/11 - I was quite disappointed with this book. I was looking for an explanation for why Ruby is considered a heroic rebel leader in Edge of Dark. What I got was a teenager who didn't want to follow the logical advice of people more knowledgeable and more experienced than her and the characters looking up to another heroic rebel leader from sometime in the past, whose experiences aren't well explained for unexplained reasons. I also got even more unanswered questions regarding why things are the way they are - no one remembers anything from before their lifetime (no history books, nothing taught in education classes), and the AI running the ship, Ix, is buggy and refuses to explain anything properly unless you ask the exact right question. No one knows what the ship looks like from the outside, most of the people on the ship had no idea why they were on a ship or where they were going, and all information is disseminated so that no one person knows more than a small portion of the whole truth. I found all that secrecy completely ridiculous and counter-intuitive to successfully completing their mission (which also wasn't properly explained but seemed to have something to do with exploring a few planets in different star systems and taking some samples, for unknown reasons).

If you haven't read or finished this book, don't read the synopsis for the next one, unless (like me) you get bored with this book and just want to know the main points of what's going to happen in the end. The synopsis reveals pretty much all the 'cliff hanger' moments of the end of this book, of which there are a few. The book ended very abruptly, it felt like it was a chapter ending, but there were no more pages. I have The Diamond Deep waiting for me, so I think I'll just skim it to see what the final conclusion is, but I'm glad I read Edge of Dark first. I never would have continued if this was the first of Cooper's books that I was reading.

PopSugar 2015 Reading Challenge: A Book with a Love Triangle

3/8 - I've only read 40 pages, but I'm really enjoying this so far. I was a little scared and disturbed by the low average rating on GR and was worried I was going to be disappointed, but all of 40 pages in this is great. None of what is described in the summary has happened yet, the 'worst nightmare banished to the far edge of the solar system' hasn't made an appearance yet. I'm looking forward to when they do. To be continued...

4/8 - So annoyed right now (I've calmed down since last night, last night I wanted to scream and throw the book at a wall)!!

A little background to explain why the current situation has made me so angry: a few weeks ago I came across by Peter F. Hamilton. It looked very interesting to me, I don't read a lot of sci-fi and I've never read a space opera, but after reading the summary I thought I would love it. I checked the book thoroughly and had the librarian check the database to make sure it was the first book in the series. It was indeed the first book in the Void series. Within a few pages I knew that something wasn't right, that I was missing some vital world building information. I headed straight for GR to check the series page. That's where I learned the full truth. Unfortunately, nowhere in the description of the book is it noted that while it was the first book in the series, the series is also a spinoff series of his series The Commonwealth Saga. The new series is set in the same world as The Commonwealth Saga with a 1200 year gap, but things are not explained as fully as I'm sure they would have been if the Void series hadn't had a connection to The Commonwealth Saga. There's no need to go into the details of how everyone got where they are if it's all already been explained in a previous book, which the author is assuming you've read. So after realising that I wasn't going to be able to continue reading The Dreaming Void I did everything I could to get my hands on the first two books in The Commonwealth Saga. My library didn't have either, the first book was going to cost at least $11 to buy the paperback edition so I surrendered to the Amazon monster and bought the Kindle edition for $8. The second book in the series was a bit more accessible, I got it from www.bookdepository.com for $5.34. I will get to them when I can.

So now you can understand why I got so angry when I came to the realisation during last night's reading session that this book, Edge of Dark has put me in exactly the same situation as Peter F. Hamilton's books did. I did the same due diligence when it came to checking that Edge of Dark was definitely the first book in the series (although I borrowed this the same day that I borrowed Hamilton's The Dreaming Void, so I didn't have the past experience with spinoff series to guide me), which it clearly is, it even says so on the front cover. Once again, the one thing it doesn't say anywhere (on the book, the library database, the summary on GR) is that this is a spinoff series from her series Ruby's Song. Similarly to Hamilton's series Edge of Dark is set in the same world as Ruby's Song, with a multiple year gap (not clear exactly how many) between the two series.

So that's why I'm so annoyed. I don't know whether to go on reading this (it's mostly making sense, I just wish they'd stop referencing events from Ruby's Song so often, I'm worried I'm being given spoilers without even realising it) or return it for The Creative Fire, the first in the Ruby's Song series. To be continued...(maybe)

5/8 - Okay, so I've kept going with this despite my aforementioned problems because I had an emergency reading situation and this was the book that was nearest to hand. Immediately after reaching for this out of desperation I came across a pair of glaring, and damning, editing errors - not a good restart - and since then I've noticed quite a lot of missing words, extra words, and jumbled sentences. I'm not going to mention all the instances of editing mistakes because it would mean practically rereading the last 130 pages as I didn't tag them as I was reading last night and this morning. I will give the details of the first two that I noticed after getting back into the book last night because I know what page they're on - 102.

Top of the page

Nona feel faint as she shifted her glance...

bottom of the same page

Who they were afraid would hear them?

and those weren't the worst examples that I noticed. There were whole sentences that were unreadable they were so jumbled. I could work out what Cooper was trying to say, but that was just thanks to the context. If I had read some of the sentences by themselves I would not have known what was happening.

Despite that, despite editing mistakes of all kinds being at the top of my 'things to do if you want me to hate your book' list I'm thoroughly enjoying the story. I almost feel like I'm somehow being tricked into liking it, like the book is emitting 'like me' pheromones, because I shouldn't like this as much as I do. First, I haven't read the previous books in the series, and now I find some dreadful editing, so why do I still want to give this a four when, after looking back over what I've just written it seems clear that it doesn't deserve more than a three? I don't know, my brain doesn't make any sense to me either. Back to the book ASAP, maybe make it an early night for reading. To be continued...

6/8 - Goodness me! Now she's mixed a pair of characters up. On page 287 Chrystal is sitting in a chair waiting for her companions to wake up, contemplating what she wants to say to them when they do.

Another thing to ask about when Charlie and Nona woke up.

The only problem with that sentence is that Charlie is on a ship millions of kilometres away, what that sentence should say is Satyana and Nona because they are the only two characters on the space station Chrystal has had any meaningful contact with, the only two characters it would make sense for Chrystal to be waiting for. That's a big oopsie in my opinion, worse than multiple missing words because you can miss the fact that a 'the' or an 'and' is missing within a sentence, but not noticing that you're talking about the wrong character is a much bigger mistake. The editing in this book really needs some work. To be continued...

7/8 - Finished. I've just started to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica while I write my review (I like to multitask computer use with tv watching, otherwise I feel like I'm not being productive enough) and watching the opening sequence made me realise how similar Edge of Dark is to Battlestar Galactica. The opening sequence of the show tells us

The Cylons were created by man...
They rebelled...
They evolved...
There are many copies...
And they have a plan

Very similar backstory to The Next. The Next were created by man, they were banished (I assume, it's not completely explained, for the same reasons as on BG, that man began to fear its own creation), they evolved, they decided to fight back. There are also many copies of the same 'consciousness' I suppose you could call it, for e.g. Jhailing Jim. In both stories the humans originally came from Earth, but it was so long ago it feels more like an urban legend than real history. Some humans are working with the robots, some are actively working against them. Both sets of robots want peace with the humans, but the humans find it difficult to bend to the will of an artificial intelligence that they created and then attempted to destroy. Interesting coincidences.

In spite of all its problems I really enjoyed this book, I think the plot was enough to cancel out any editing errors, which definitely continued on through the last hundred pages, which I read last night. This could almost have been a five if I had read the two previous books, which I hope make more of an effort to explain questions a reader might have. Like, where did the humans in this galaxy come from and how long ago? Or, a better explanation of The Deep and The Glittering Edge. I've made 'suggestions for purchase' to my library, but my requests are still pending. I'll be more than a little pissed if they deny my requests.

Wants, wants, wants!

New AI book!

This is another sample review.  

Anthologies are difficult to review because there are many different authors and quality of writing in them.  A good editor, would of course, ensure that only quality stories made it into the anthology though.  

This was not the case.  The sample provided one full sample, and what I think is the majority of a second.  The first sample was horrendous.  The author needs an editor that could help them shape their writing and the editor of this anthology should have done his job and canned it... not place it as the very first story folks are going to read.

The second story, Father of War by James Chambers, is the only reason that I am giving this book two and a half stars.  It was amazing.  I would be willing to purchase Chamber's work, but I am not willing to take a gamble that Mr. McPhail included stories of that caliber in the rest of the anthology.

So, I recommend that you go grab the sample, read Father of War and then look for more work by James Chambers if you want to purchase a book.