Reviews and Comments

What a difficult book to review. On one hand, I can see why some people would like this - it was certainly proficiently written and character-oriented. On the other hand, I found the characters mostly dull and two-dimensional, the stakes low, the universe uninspired. I was fully prepared to give it two stars, but every time it kind of surprised me and did something slightly unexpected.

Normally I'd call for an editor to cut out the boring bits, except that here the boring bits were kind of the point. So yeah, someone's favourite book probably, just not mine.

I'd like to write hard sci-fi, but Greg Egan has set the bar so unbelievably high...

Diaspora is simply brilliant. Starting from the birth of an artificial mind, it blossoms into a breathtaking tale of cosmology, peril, exploration, discovery and meditation on what it means to be sentient. These are recurring themes in his work, but the sheer Matryoshka doll -like scale of Diaspora is awe-inspiring unlike anything else.

This was a delightful surprise. A near-future techno-thriller with a light touch of steel-hard sci-fi, Corsair feels like it's written by Tom Clancy's mischievous, anarchist kid sister or brother. This is a compliment, by the way. Whereas Clancy's characters would be stodgy and politically unpleasant, Cambias' are cheerfully amoral and chaotic, and the story is at its heart one of cops and robbers. Even when things get serious and nasty - and they do - the book never quite loses the feel of a dynamic adventure story.

Not a page is wasted and the conclusion is immensely satisfying.