A post-apocalyptic tale with more twisting than a ‘50s dance hall. McMullen has created the most fully-realized and most unique post-apocalyptic story world I have ever come across. Nearly everything in this tale is presented in stages so I can’t say much without spoiling the reveals. Suffice it to say that in Australia thousands of years after Greatwinter human power (both muscle and brain) is used for just about everything. Everything. This is actually a combination of two shorter novels and that really shows. The first half of the book is tightly focused on a small group of characters in Libris, the central and most powerful library in the Southern Alliance, and their struggles to create a machine called the Calculor. The story then expands dramatically to a sprawling (almost rambling) story about the continent-spanning adventures of this same group (along with a host of others) and their interactions with the mysterious Mirrorsun. This second half is almost as interesting as the first, but there are so many threads to follow that they all loose their potency. The motivations of certain parties become impossible to follow. McMullen’s tendency to skip six weeks between paragraphs and as much as ten years between chapters does not help to keep things in focus. I can’t decide if this is book about relationships that plays out against a background of technology and politics or a book about technology and politics with a heavy focus on relationships. Either way there is a lot of interplay between the two. It makes for a great read as you can see how people’s choices are going to play out on the international stage, except for all those times that you can’t follow the motivations and things end up all deus ex machina. I’ve wanted to read this for a long time and had really built it up in my mind. It’s not quite as good as I’d hoped, but it is good. It’s the first in a trilogy and I’ll be reading the others soon.
10 May 2010
A Review: Souls in the Great Machine - Sean McMullen
4 / 5 Stars
A post-apocalyptic tale with more twisting than a ‘50s dance hall. McMullen has created the most fully-realized and most unique post-apocalyptic story world I have ever come across. Nearly everything in this tale is presented in stages so I can’t say much without spoiling the reveals. Suffice it to say that in Australia thousands of years after Greatwinter human power (both muscle and brain) is used for just about everything. Everything. This is actually a combination of two shorter novels and that really shows. The first half of the book is tightly focused on a small group of characters in Libris, the central and most powerful library in the Southern Alliance, and their struggles to create a machine called the Calculor. The story then expands dramatically to a sprawling (almost rambling) story about the continent-spanning adventures of this same group (along with a host of others) and their interactions with the mysterious Mirrorsun. This second half is almost as interesting as the first, but there are so many threads to follow that they all loose their potency. The motivations of certain parties become impossible to follow. McMullen’s tendency to skip six weeks between paragraphs and as much as ten years between chapters does not help to keep things in focus. I can’t decide if this is book about relationships that plays out against a background of technology and politics or a book about technology and politics with a heavy focus on relationships. Either way there is a lot of interplay between the two. It makes for a great read as you can see how people’s choices are going to play out on the international stage, except for all those times that you can’t follow the motivations and things end up all deus ex machina. I’ve wanted to read this for a long time and had really built it up in my mind. It’s not quite as good as I’d hoped, but it is good. It’s the first in a trilogy and I’ll be reading the others soon.
A post-apocalyptic tale with more twisting than a ‘50s dance hall. McMullen has created the most fully-realized and most unique post-apocalyptic story world I have ever come across. Nearly everything in this tale is presented in stages so I can’t say much without spoiling the reveals. Suffice it to say that in Australia thousands of years after Greatwinter human power (both muscle and brain) is used for just about everything. Everything. This is actually a combination of two shorter novels and that really shows. The first half of the book is tightly focused on a small group of characters in Libris, the central and most powerful library in the Southern Alliance, and their struggles to create a machine called the Calculor. The story then expands dramatically to a sprawling (almost rambling) story about the continent-spanning adventures of this same group (along with a host of others) and their interactions with the mysterious Mirrorsun. This second half is almost as interesting as the first, but there are so many threads to follow that they all loose their potency. The motivations of certain parties become impossible to follow. McMullen’s tendency to skip six weeks between paragraphs and as much as ten years between chapters does not help to keep things in focus. I can’t decide if this is book about relationships that plays out against a background of technology and politics or a book about technology and politics with a heavy focus on relationships. Either way there is a lot of interplay between the two. It makes for a great read as you can see how people’s choices are going to play out on the international stage, except for all those times that you can’t follow the motivations and things end up all deus ex machina. I’ve wanted to read this for a long time and had really built it up in my mind. It’s not quite as good as I’d hoped, but it is good. It’s the first in a trilogy and I’ll be reading the others soon.
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