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Mon, 14 Jan 2013

Rapture of the Nerds, by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow

I thought that Charlie Stross was like Christopher Lee: incapable of error. Oh how wrong I was.

Revisiting what used to be an old theme of his - The Singularity - and in collaboration with Cory Doctorow, who is one of the great up and coming writers (supposedly - I've not read any of his solo stuff), this should have been not just entertaining but a good read too. Unfortunately it ain't. While it's chock-full of ideas, they're not used well, being just splattered onto the page with apparently little concern for the results, amongst cartoon-like one-dimensional supporting characters and leading to slapstick results. I came very close to not finishing the book.

On the plus side, much of the writing is tight, clear and inventive, as you would expect from two established professionals, but that can't lift a badly plotted story. Not recommended, not even as a legal free download.

Posted at 17:17 by David Cantrell
keywords: books | sci-fi
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