3 member(s) found this review helpful.
I found this book to be a welcome relief from the common break-neck paced SF novel. The concepts seem simple on the surface; giant artifacts from the future are appear all over the world. The artifacts are man-made and mark the coming conquest of the world.
The events and characters have depth and complexity. Yet there is a subtly and grace to the writing style that brought the story more alive than most SF novels I've read.
Highly recommended!
The events and characters have depth and complexity. Yet there is a subtly and grace to the writing style that brought the story more alive than most SF novels I've read.
Highly recommended!
1 member(s) found this review helpful.
A novel of time and time changes, as a series near-future events impact the past. Causality is explored and the idea of "fate as inevitable" gets stretched in an interesting way. Recommended.
I had been wanting to read this book for a while, so I eagerly tore into it when it arrived. Unfortunately, it was not a very satisfying read. The main character was hard to relate to and the milieu of the collapsing economy not well drawn out. Further, the overall mystery (where are the chronoliths coming from and how do we stop them!) was not solved with any satisfaction. The book would have been more interesting if it had shifted view points throughout rather than sticking with the main character who just seemed to stumble blindly through life (although perhaps that was part of the point the author was trying to make). In short-- the concept for the book was interesting, just not well executed.
A software engineer, Scott, is 'on break' in rural Thailand when he and his drug-dealing buddy Hitch happen to be in the right place at the right (wrong?) time to be some of the first people to view the first of the Chronoliths - giant obelisks that appear out of nowhere, announcing the military victory of the enigmatic Kuin - dated to happen twenty years and three months in the future. And Thailand is only the first - soon more and more appear, causing widespread death and destruction, and causing not just awe but cults, secret societies, frantic military readying and scientific investigation.
The book has interesting thoughts on the physics of time, the social effects of monuments (and self-fulfilling prophecies).
However, although the writing in this book is noticeably more masterful than in the earlier book I read by Wilson, the 'feel' of its style, I thought, was still very 'mainstream-thriller.'
The book has interesting thoughts on the physics of time, the social effects of monuments (and self-fulfilling prophecies).
However, although the writing in this book is noticeably more masterful than in the earlier book I read by Wilson, the 'feel' of its style, I thought, was still very 'mainstream-thriller.'
facsinating read