Synopsis: Several thousand years in the future humanity has colonized large parts of the galaxy, but has never encountered another sentient, starfaring race. Now two civilizations race to explore a galactic anomaly, a mysterious star that shuts itself off for every 215 out of 250 years, and to make first contact with the inhabitants of the lone planet orbiting it.

But these two groups have very different goals and reasons for making first contact...

I felt like this book had a lot of potential, but that some of it was ultimately a let down. Instead of a story filled with action gratifying the more obvious plot paths, we're given something much more subtle and deep, but also a lot slower.

On one side of the story we're given a slow, methodical, revolution centered on subterfuge. The other plot line revolves around the planet's inhabitants as the book introduces alien characters and sits with them for generations.

While I don't think it's 4 star material, Vinge obviously put a lot of thought into character development here, as many of them are sincerely likeable, while others are very effective villains. While she isn't seen much in the book Honoured Pedure in particular struck me as a great embodiment of rightwing conservative villainy.

One other thing to note, Vinge appears to be making a very, very subtle play at...something. In the context of the novel inhabitants of the planet spend most of their time in a kind of biological cryostasis, only being awake an involved with the world around them for the 35 years out 250 that their sun is active. Conservative members of the population dominate the planet, and believe that their young should be born and raised in a rigid alignment with that cycle. There's some stuff about souls and what not.

The human characters in the book regard these notions as bizarre, the same way an alien race looking at Earth might say "Half of you get your panties in a knot over gay people? Wtf" or "You believe in souls ahahahahahaha".

All in all an enjoyable read, but the ending dragged on and on.

General rating: 3 1/2

Epic rating: 3 1/2

I've heard alot about Vernor Vinge before, he's a leading voice in futurism and singularity discussions, but I've never read any of his books before this.

Synopsis: Robert Gu was America's best loved poet before he developed Alzheimers (also a total asshole), but when future medicine brings him and his mental faculties back he becomes embroiled in a plot involving a traitorous intelligence officer, a group of printed book enthusiasts (most books in this future are of a virtual sort), and a mysterious and extremely manipulative entity, known as Rabbit, puppetering events throughout the story.

Rainbows End offers a fascinating glimpse of the future, but unlike so many others like it it offers little in the way of social commentary on that future. There is little said of the state of privacy (there doesn't look to be a whole lot of it) and the book speaks little of human rights or any other issue. Your pretty much left to figure the future out for yourself.

I found much of the story to be fairly boring. Events are manipulated and people are manuevered into place and this takes up the majority of the story. About 75% of the way through it picks up and becomes fairly engaging, but until then it was a bit of a slog.

My biggest gripe with this book were the loose ends Vinge left hanging. There were a couple questions I really wanted to see answered which were not. Even a large headscratching red herring.

I cant say it was badass or epic either unless you think Machiavellian style manuevering counts, in which case I don't think the book pushed it far enough anyway for it to be considered.

3 1/2 stars general

1 1/2 epic rating

I first read Snowcrash years ago, as an ebook straight from a laptop screen. I generally don't like to read books from my laptop, but Snowcrash was an absolute joy at the time, and remains that way the second time around.

Our character of choice is one Hiro Protagonist (yeah you get the joke, but still this book makes up for it), a hacker (in Snowcrash a term which is interchangeable with programmer oddly enough) in a dystopian America which exists mostly as loosely connected citystates known as franculates or burbclaves. The US government still exists, but struggles desperately to hold on to whatever it can and has eschewed laws and regulations in favor of going hog wild. Laws, for the most part, no longer exist, each citystate enforcing its own laws and regulations independent of each other, and sometimes their own punishments as well. National defense, religion, and other cultural and federal authorities have been privatized and commercialized. Admiral Bob's Navy, and General Jim's Defense System for example. Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates, features a triumvirate of Jesus, Holy Ghost and Elvis.

America still manages to do four things better than anyone else...

Movies
Music
Software and....
Pizza delivery

Yes pizza delivery. This is a book where people go to university level schools for 4 years to learn how to deliver za's. For the mafia no less (apparently pizza delivery is really SERIOUS BUSINESS in the future. The book goes to great lengths to make this apparent). The book starts with an a adrenaline packed shotgun blast of a chapter or two, but slows down. It took awhile to get going after that, but eventually expands into a wild and incredibly creative (and also complicated) plotline involving a neurolinguistic metavirus from ancient Sumeria, an Aleut harpoon thrower with a thing for glass knives, and babbling crazy people living on thousands of boats, large and small, lashed together into an ocean drifting monstrosity known as 'The Raft'.

This book is one wild ride once it gets down to it, and its plotline is one of the most creative I've seen yet. Highly recommend.

For a generally being awesome I give it a 5, and on an epic scale I'm going to err on the high with a 4.5 (a 4 being as low as I would go with that).