Mmm, that's pretty well what I thought, only much more succinctly put. I didn't find out how the constituencies get resorted, but it seems like the scope for gerrymandering would be enormous; and one reason it aggravated me is it's reminscent of _Too Like The Lightning_, with a political setup that sounds very pat but it's not really clear that it would work, or how it does work. Although at least here the entire world isn't obsessed with the equivalent of the Sunday Times' Rich List.
(One could imagine that there's some kind of deterministic algorithm that does it based on voters' registered addresses... but curiously, all the exposition doesn't seem to have got to that bit.)
I attempted Too Like The Lightning as well; I gave up on it at the end of the Kindle sample, but have decided to give it another go after talking to another friend about it. I think I’m going to need to read the Wikipedia background and plot summaries alongside it though.
I could write twice as much as I did about this book about ways I didn't like _Too Like The Lightning_; I think it's the most thoroughly irritating thing I've read since Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, which was the thing that first cured me of "start reading it, must finish it"... so I'm not sure I would recommend it.
I think that largely overlaps with my complaints, although I might add:
a) the correct way to do a multiple volume story is to bring each book to a satisfying conclusion, perhaps by wrapping up some subplots, not to give us the impression that you ran out of typewriter ribbon and decided you might as well stop there.
b) the two main subplots for the first book are a child who can work literal miracles... and that someone has slightly meddled with the equivalent of the Sunday Times Rich List, which everyone in the world is obsessed with for no readily apparent reason. One of these things is not like the other.
It is meant here, but I think the link from liking one author's non-fic more than their fic to Adam Roberts happened mostly in my head without getting out into the comment. Oops.
I think my opinion of Adam Roberts’ SF criticism is somewhat clouded by my opinion of his SF (which is essentially ”it’s OK, I guess, but it does feel a bit like those SF books that ‘literary’ writers occasionally do without bothering to inform themselves about the field of existing SF”).
Coo. Now you say that, I'm thinking, yes, that is very definitely true, especially of the later stuff (after about Gradisil). Which is very odd, because as a successful SF critic Roberts must be well informed about the field of existing SF, but it still describes his SF perfectly. Interesting.
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(One could imagine that there's some kind of deterministic algorithm that does it based on voters' registered addresses... but curiously, all the exposition doesn't seem to have got to that bit.)
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(Have read the second book. Will resentfully read the plot summaries of books 3 & 4, I suspect.)
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a) the correct way to do a multiple volume story is to bring each book to a satisfying conclusion, perhaps by wrapping up some subplots, not to give us the impression that you ran out of typewriter ribbon and decided you might as well stop there.
b) the two main subplots for the first book are a child who can work literal miracles... and that someone has slightly meddled with the equivalent of the Sunday Times Rich List, which everyone in the world is obsessed with for no readily apparent reason. One of these things is not like the other.
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I think my opinion of Adam Roberts’ SF criticism is somewhat clouded by my opinion of his SF (which is essentially ”it’s OK, I guess, but it does feel a bit like those SF books that ‘literary’ writers occasionally do without bothering to inform themselves about the field of existing SF”).
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