Review: Great North Road

Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's good, I won't deny that. The idea of the story, with a mystery murder that in spite of the all-encompassing surveillance technology is unknowable. The victim, a clone that has hundreds of other running around and all of whom are accounted for. The crime scene, where all of the camera-like devices and detectors have been shut down. The method of murder, a weird 5-bladed knife. All of it points to a monster that until know was considered only a figment of the only survivor a previous similar incident.

It all works, it all plays out quite well, mostly logically. But man it's long. It's not like there are wasted words, but there are a few sections that go into details that, while interesting in and of themselves, can be glossed rather than spelled out.

Cut the middle 200 pages, this would be edging 5 stars for me. That said, this one will still stick with me for a bit.

View all my reviews

Review: Medicine for the Dead

Medicine for the Dead by Arianne "Tex" Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll skip doing a review for book one (One Night in Sixes) of this series because while it was good, it wasn't great. It threw you into the deep end of what is clearly a well-established world in the mind of the author, a sort of otherworldly Old West filled with all the trappings of the genre, but with weird, almost alien tribes in place of the Native Americans that normally populate Westerns. All told, the ultimately quite straightforward story of a man accidentally killing another was complicated with a ton of details that maybe didn't quite settle.

This book takes all those trappings, all those details and makes them work. Based around a single trip across an arid desert where the victim's keeper must escort his killer to their homeland to be judged, everything comes together. All the traditions, rituals and languages make sense, the action, the motivations, the reactions, everything works.

Despite the fact that nothing much happens in the grand scheme of things, the little things are really interesting. I can't wait to see where this goes.

View all my reviews