Leszek Ciesielski

As an anthology, it's impossible to grade, really. Some of the stories are incredibly good, some, eh, not that much. It's a very good view back, to the beginnings of Cyberpunk.

There's very little Pratchett in this book, unfortunately. It's based on his 30-year old short story, but it feels like Terry had practically no input in growing it into a book. It's really underdeveloped.If you're looking for an interesting read on parallel worlds, go check out [b:The Family Trade 17861 The Family Trade (The Merchant Princes, #1) Charles Stross https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408262924l/17861.SY75.jpg 930587] by [a:Charles Stross 8794 Charles Stross https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1355510574p2/8794.jpg] (and frankly, Long Earth reads like a fanfic rewrite of parts of this one).

This is an incredibly odd book.

The book is definitely interesting. It is not, though, SF, as that is literary genre, and The Martian is more of a NASA guidebook or manual. The protagonist muddles through catastrophe after catastrophe, only to be thrown into the next one with extreme predictability, all the time keeping the certainty that his/NASA's engineering genius will save him. No characters to speak of, the whole read is a demonstration of authors proficiency with the “science” part, but very little of the “fiction”. More like an astronaut training drill.

I've enjoyed it. Dragon riders, reasonably thought out battles. And a not-quite-regency era romance. Yeah, it's cheesy and happy. It also (at least the first book) doesn't explore much behind the ridiculously class-obsessed setting, which for a recent book is a let down. It's also ridiculously francophobic and painting a horror-like image of Napoleon, which (as a Polish person) makes it somewhat hard to cheer for the protagonists.