Review - The Risen Empire
Apr. 17th, 2008 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wilderthanSince I seem to be getting into a habit of putting down my thoughts about every new book I read, here are my thoughts on The Risen Empire, by Scott Westerfeld.
The main thing was that I didn't really feel the characters that well. I felt the book was written more about the technology and the backdrop than about people -- which is fine, and I've come across it a lot in sci-fi, but it isn't the way I prefer books to be. No matter how many people waxed lyrical, in the text, about Laurent Zai, I didn't care that much about him. Honestly, my favourite character was one of the bits of technology -- an intelligent house.
That aside, I did enjoy it, and the physics didn't leave me behind too often. And nor, thankfully, did the politics, of which there was a moderate amount (since one of the main characters was a senator). If you like sci-fi, I think I'd recommend it. I'm rapidly discovering, though, that sci-fi really isn't my genre, since there's more often a focus on technology than on characters.
The ending felt strange to me, in that nothing was resolved. The empire may or may not fall apart. The compound mind may or may not triumph. Senator Oxham and Captain Zai may or may not see each other again. But I did like the closing scene, which is set ten years before the main action of the book (and we get little glimpses of "ten years before" throughout the book). The very last lines of it are lovely.
[They] had taught [him] one certain rule: never laugh at a kiss. A kiss was mysterious and powerful, fragile and invincible. Like any spark, a kiss might fizzle into nothing, or consume an entire forest. A kiss was no laughing matter. Not for the wary.
A kiss could change the world.
It does seem odd for that to be the final word, since that's very strongly about the characters rather than war/technology, but I did love it.
The main thing that interested me had little to do with the plot, oddly enough. This involved throwing the word "synaesthesia" around a lot -- in the book it's used as a way to handle multiple lots of data at once and to experience data in a deeper way. I think it was mainly interesting to me because it made me realise I have synaesthesia -- I can taste words. But that's beside the point!
The main thing was that I didn't really feel the characters that well. I felt the book was written more about the technology and the backdrop than about people -- which is fine, and I've come across it a lot in sci-fi, but it isn't the way I prefer books to be. No matter how many people waxed lyrical, in the text, about Laurent Zai, I didn't care that much about him. Honestly, my favourite character was one of the bits of technology -- an intelligent house.
That aside, I did enjoy it, and the physics didn't leave me behind too often. And nor, thankfully, did the politics, of which there was a moderate amount (since one of the main characters was a senator). If you like sci-fi, I think I'd recommend it. I'm rapidly discovering, though, that sci-fi really isn't my genre, since there's more often a focus on technology than on characters.
The ending felt strange to me, in that nothing was resolved. The empire may or may not fall apart. The compound mind may or may not triumph. Senator Oxham and Captain Zai may or may not see each other again. But I did like the closing scene, which is set ten years before the main action of the book (and we get little glimpses of "ten years before" throughout the book). The very last lines of it are lovely.
[They] had taught [him] one certain rule: never laugh at a kiss. A kiss was mysterious and powerful, fragile and invincible. Like any spark, a kiss might fizzle into nothing, or consume an entire forest. A kiss was no laughing matter. Not for the wary.
A kiss could change the world.
It does seem odd for that to be the final word, since that's very strongly about the characters rather than war/technology, but I did love it.
The main thing that interested me had little to do with the plot, oddly enough. This involved throwing the word "synaesthesia" around a lot -- in the book it's used as a way to handle multiple lots of data at once and to experience data in a deeper way. I think it was mainly interesting to me because it made me realise I have synaesthesia -- I can taste words. But that's beside the point!
