Apart from the ending, I found Engine City to be the best of the three books in the Engines of Light trilogy; the ending, though, was just dreadful; a nonsensical let down. In fact it seems to suggest a fourth book but, since we’re now twelve years on from Engine City, that would seem unlikely.The bulk of the book was very good indeed. It moved along at a page turning pace with an interesting story that offered some intriguing ideas (his Multipliers were really rather fun if somewhat unlikely). One of my favourite ideas throughout these books has been his approach to interstellar travel. He doesn’t quite break the laws of physics but still manages a true space opera without a faster than light drive. Instead they have a light speed engine; not faster than light but just light speed. A quick check up on the theories of relativity reveals that, with such a drive, if you were making a one hundred light year journey that journey will appear to the crew to be instantaneous whilst to the outside world it will appear to take one hundred years. So these books have traders who will make what appears to them to be a short journey only to return to their origin where, depending on the length of that journey, possibly hundreds of years have passed. I liked this element of realism that is so often dodged in space operas and which MacLeod addresses by having complete extended family communities crewing these ships.Another aspect I liked was that, for this book, MacLeod has reined in his politics a bit; not completely (I’m not sure MacLeod is capable of writing a completely non-political book!) but it’s not in the reader’s face nearly as much as the second volume in the trilogy – Dark Light. This made for an altogether more relaxed and enjoyable read. But then he had to give us such a terrible ending. Without going into spoilers, it was just a rushed, untidy and unsatisfactory disappointment, and it didn’t need to be; there are many other possible good endings he could have used. Then he compounded that with an epilogue (okay so he called it a ‘coda’ but it was an epilogue) which served only to open up a complete new can of worms and then left that can hanging and unresolved, suggesting a fourth book which has never been written.With a better ending this would have been 4 stars, as it is I can’t give it more than three (possibly 3.5) and that is a shame; I really wanted to give it more.
What the hell just happened? This book is about half the length of the previous two installments, and reads as if major sections of plot were totally excised from the final product. Hugely important stuff happens entirely off-stage:(view spoiler)[Nova Babylonia transforming from a steady-state green philosopher's paradise to an industrial conglomeration of nation states with space capacity;Gregor and Elizabeth having, raising, and educating a child who by the time the book starts is a fully grown adult with background, needs, motivations, desires, etc, of which the reader knows NOTHING;Finding a bunch of other cosmonauts and recruiting them for the mission -- what, is there a bar where they all hang out when they're not on camera?Meeting the FREAKING OCTOPODS!DRINKING THE OCTOPOD BLOOD!KILLING MORE GODS!!! (hide spoiler)]
Do You like book Engine City (2004)?
The prologue clarifies the role of the gods, and spells out the reason that they seeded the Second Sphere with earth flora and fauna, which I was very happy about as I had been wondering about it since reading the first book of the trilogy. From there we follow Grigori Volkov and the Tenebre trading ship to Nova Babylonia, and Gregor and Elizabeth back on Mingulay, where they discover evidence that the spider-monkey aliens may have returned. And from then onwards, events unroll in extremely unexpected ways.
—Isabel (kittiwake)
I wanted to like this series more than I did. I just could not bring myself to care about the competing communist/socialist/anarchist/democratic etc ideologies (really, Volkov, *must* you cause a revolution in every society you encounter, even happy, functional ones?), and the author's tendency to hint at an explanation for something, end the scene, and never bring it up again was pretty irritating.Overall I liked this one better than the first two, but the end was out of left field--it's explai
—Pam
