Jabartik

I am a big fan of Mr Reynolds, House of Suns will forever be a book I look back fondly at. Sadly Permafrost was the exact opposite of that experience.

Gives tantalizing glimpses of an interesting future, but there's very little meat to it. I liked the new view on what time may be and how it would adjust to changes, but at the end of the day this was very standard exploration of time travel + paradoxes with a stereotypical “closed loop” ending where the entire journey was invalidated in the last few pages. It was well executed and clearly the intention all along (and not an “oh crap, I can't figure out how to end this”) copout - but I found it extremely unfulfilling.

Characters are cardboard cutouts and undergo precisely 0 character development from start to finish. This is always a risk in hard sci-fi, but usually the “big idea” pay-off makes up for it, which this book cannot claim.

As an additional note, while I do not rate books on length or cost, but rather quality of execution and how long the ideas stay with me, potential buyers should be aware this is extremely short - novella length at best. Looking at my emails from Amazon/Goodreads I can derive that finished it in about 81 minutes, and this is one of the few times in my life I look back on the time I spent reading a book and wish I had that time back - which, if you think about how little time that actually represents is very telling.

Top notch, Evan just keeps getting better and better.

I just finished re-reading this today and it was as good or better than my first time through it.

For anyone who stumbled onto this review because they're potentially interested in the book, my advice to you is to buy it and read it. Right now. It's absolutely fantastic, both in the sense of the information it provides and the manner/style in which that information is presented. William Bernstein is an absolute pleasure to read, I don't know anyone else who can make such a potentially dry subject so accessible, and dare I say - actually fun to read.

For anyone who stumbled onto this review because you follow my personal feed/reviews, be warned that this probably isn't what you're looking for.

Pretty decent, kind of an “infodump” style book though. All the characters were basically plot devices, it was fairly difficult to tell them apart at times. Some very interesting concepts though, and I rather enjoyed it.

Similar to, but not quite as interesting as the sookie books.

I really liked this one, although it left me wanting more - I don't suppose I can hold it against that. The editing issues I noted in my Thermal and Odyssey One reviews are essentially eliminated.

Overall, a very good hard military sci-fi book. Anyone who likes that sort of thing should probably read this.

The best of the first trilogy, although I either missed something that contributed to the events in the ending, or I'm supposed to chalk it up to the universe's biggest coincidence yet.

Brin's writing style is sort of maddening - I've never been fond of imperfect narrators - I don't mean omniscient, I mean narrators who are an integral part of the story who do “know” things, but don't “think” them where I can see them as a storytelling device to keep the suspense going longer).

Nevertheless, and despite the “main” story not being all that interesting to me, I'm fascinated by the world and backstory that he's created and want more.

Not bad, but overrated.

I guess I would classify this as an exciting near-future techno thriller. Start with a known nuclear terrorist, add a kilometer high solar tower in Australia, shake thoroughly, and enjoy trying to figure out what the two possibly have to do with one another.

Could use some help in the editing department, but I think this is potentially the start of something really good. Very solid near-future military science fiction up there with the works of Weber and Ringo.

Although I guess it shouldn't matter, this is even more impressive to me because it's self-published. I highly recommend anyone who has any interest in the genre to grab this one.

Fairly decent political thriller

It is immortality of a sort

Good read, standard Dresden. I'm sad I finished it, but I' look forward to the next one.

Would have given it a 2.5 if I could. I'll be generous and round up instead.

These really are amazingly short, but what can you do? I enjoy reading them, so that's that.

I liked this one, but if I step back and think about it... nothing really happened. Kind of odd, but I won't hold that against it punitively since I did get a kick out of it (for some reason).

I continue to enjoy the ongoing story, but it felt like I was reading the ARC instead of the real one.

Just feels a little rushed and could have benefited from some more polish. The ‘sabotage' subplot especially I think will leave many people puzzled, I feel it should have been resolved within this book and not the next one (although I believe I understand what happened, shoot me a message if curious).

Didn't feel like a very satisfying conclusion. I might have liked it more if it wasn't the finale.

Story is getting pretty bleak

Overall, pretty good. I think I'll read the second one to see what happens because the series shows promise.

This specific book suffers a little from a large amount of setup and character introduction up front, but starts finally moving along decently in the back half.

One thing I don't particularly love is how every essentially every chapter switches viewpoints - it's not that it's difficult to keep up, but something interesting happens, and I need to wait 6 chapters to get back to it. I hope he tones that part down later on, it just feels gimmicky. Not every viewpoint needs equal and equally spaced representation!

IMO this was an ‘OK' book, and there were even parts I genuinely liked, but in no way does this deserve the hype/high praise that's been dumped on it.

It's like harry potter for dystopia/conspiracy nut jobs with a little mysticism sprinkled on top. I can only assume the primary reason it has so many fans is because it's accessible to the lowest common denominator.

More Ringo space nerd-candy. I could read this stuff all day.

Typical Ringo military(ish) scifi nerd candy.

I enjoyed the process of reading it. In many ways it's better than the first book. It doesn't really feel like a complete book in and of itself, but I guess I can live with that - if it was 500 pages I would have felt ripped off, but at 1000 it's hard to complain.

I have no idea how he's going to finish the storyline in one more book though, 1000 pages or not. We'll have to see if he pulls a dust of dreams / crippled god.