Charlie Stross' Family Trade and Singularity Sky

[jack]

Oh dear. These *aought* to have been wonderful. They're basically (deliberately) "Nine Princes of Amber by Charlie Stross" and "Fire Upon the Deep by Charlie Stross". I loved "The Atrocity Archives" and would have thought the author would have been a perfect choice for a Zelazny-alike and a Vinge-alike; both are books crying out for a genre, and Stross has the same casual-approach-to-massive-events tone which works well.

But both seemed to set up wonderful universes, but not really excite me as books. I think I will try the sequels and hope they are good.

Comments

[ceb.livejournal.com]

FWIW I found the pacing in Singularity Sky terrible, but it was his first novel. Iron Sunrise and the others I've read are much better. Accelerando's particularly good.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Seconded - Singularity Sky is a bit of a letdown because the writing isn't quite up to the level of the ideas in it. Accelerando is much better in this regard, as are his short stories.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you! That's about what I expected -- I decided I almost certainly liked him enough to read on anyway, whatever the first books were like, so decided to start at the beginning even the second books were more famous. So it sounds like I'm onto a good track.

[douglas-reay.livejournal.com]

I like this books, but then I've always been mainly into reading SF for the ideas rather than the writing. My ideal sort of book is one where I can read a paragraph, then day dream for an hour about how I would set thing up in such and such a sitution.