Elitist Book Reviews

Occasionally I read the back of a book and an idea grabs me.  Honestly that’s what I love about SFF books.  There are tons of great ideas out there and I love when an author plays with one and lets me tag along for the ride.  The idea of personal incorporation in the Unincorporated Series was one such idea.  China Miéville's works are so jam-packed with ideas that he often tosses a few of them out on a single page just to toy with your mind.  I read the back cover of THE NIGHT SESSIONS by Ken MacLeod and the only thing I remembered from it was “What if robots found religion?”

Holy Crap! Wow! What an idea! What a great, big, wonderful, let’s explore this and all of its ramifications, kind of idea!  I was hooked.  I needed to read this book right away.

Sadly the book was not all about robots finding religion.  It was a police procedural dealing with a murder of a religious leader in a future where robots are common and all is not as it seems (I’ll detail the plot a little better later on).  I was kind of bummed.  I was hoping for something a bit deeper that dealt with the big questions.

Happily, it was a fun police procedural book of the near future that happened to have robots finding religion in it.  Let’s deal with the happily part, OK?

Here’s the plot synopsis from amazon.  A bishop is dead. As Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson picks through the rubble of the tiny church, he discovers that it was deliberately bombed. That it's a terrorist act is soon beyond doubt. It's been a long time since anyone saw anything like this. Terrorism is history....After the Middle East wars and the rising sea levels—after Armageddon and the Flood—came the Great Rejection. The first Enlightenment separated church from state. The Second Enlightenment has separated religion from politics. In this enlightened age there's no persecution, but the millions who still believe and worship are a marginal and mistrusted minority. Now someone is killing them. At first, suspicion falls on atheists more militant than the secular authorities. But when the target list expands to include the godless, it becomes evident that something very old has risen from the ashes. Old and very, very dangerous...

There’s really even a lot more going on than this.  Part of the reason I enjoyed this book so much was the near-future world that MacLeod paints for us here.  The technology is beyond what we have, but not unbelievable. I wanted some of the high tech gizmos they have here.  I enjoyed seeing the tiny changes and not so tiny as well.  For me--not gonna lie to you--the fact that Detective Ferguson has a robot partner was a big reason I enjoyed the book.  Just enough Science Fiction to keep me going through the detective novel.

This book is about the same size as the Restoration Game, MacLeod’s previous novel published last year.  Where that book counted on the final twist at the end to really grab you by the throat, this book unravels at a much more even pace.  I enjoyed reading this book straight through to the end.  It may not have the punch at the end, but the overall reading experience was for me a bit better.

As for the religious aspect of the book, well, I’ve been thinking how to write that part of the review for awhile. 

There are characters in the book who have strong feelings about religion, both good and bad.  It’s a world where religion is generally frowned on and ignored, and it seemed to me for the most part that people who believed in religion were kind of mocked.  I’m a very religious person myself and I could see how this type of thing could offend.  As for me, I decided to just let it go.  It’s a made up world (no matter how near future it is, there is still some leeway taken).  I’ve just come to visit the world and enjoy myself.  Still, I thought you might want to know.

Overall I thought it was a fun read.  MacLeod seems to be churning these things out.  I’m anxious to see what big idea he tackles next.

Age Recommendation: 15+ maybe.  I don’t remember too much being wrong with it
Language: Again, if I remember right there was some, but not excessive
Violence: It’s about a terrorist bombing so there’s a bit, but it’s not a gory book.
Sex: Mentioned and alluded to, never shown, but strong talk about it.


Want to try this book out? Here's your link: THE NIGHT SESSIONS

Sadly I think I can write up this review for Ken MacLeod's THE RESTORATION GAME in one, short sentence. Ready for it?

Too little, too late.

I’m gonna write my review. I’m gonna tell you a bit about the story and various other things, but everything you need to know is right there. This book was hard to get through (and it was only like 250 pages), and while there was some very cool stuff that happened (really really awesome stuff that I think deserves more attention than it got here), it happened too late in the story and honestly most of the story didn’t seem to lead up to the conclusions.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with a recap of the story shall we?

There is no such place as Krassnia. Lucy Stone should know—she was born there. In that tiny, troubled region of the former Soviet Union, revolution is brewing. Its organizers need a safe place to meet, and where better than the virtual spaces of an online game? Lucy, who works for a start-up game company in Edinburgh, has a project that almost seems made for the job: a game inspired by The Krassniad, an epic folk tale concocted by Lucy's mother, Amanda, who studied there in the 1980s. Lucy knows Amanda is a spook. She knows her great-grandmother Eugenie also visited the country in the 1930s and met the man who originally collected Krassnian folklore, and who perished in Stalin's terror. As Lucy digs up details about her birthplace to slot into the game, she finds the open secrets of her family's past, the darker secrets of Krassnia's past—and hints about the crucial role she is destined to play in THE RESTORATION GAME...

I took that right off the back of the book and really it fits well. If that sounds like your type of book, then by all means dive right in and enjoy.

The problem I have with it is that there’s really no mention of anything remotely Science Fictionish about it. Sounds like a political thriller doesn’t it? I have news for you, that’s what this is. About 225 of the 250ish pages are devoted to a political thriller type of story. There are plots and schemes and revolutions and more factions and groups of people than I could keep track of (literally—I was very lost in who was working for whom and double agenting for what). The other 25 pages deal very briefly on some very interesting science fiction ideas, almost all of which occur at the end after I’ve already slogged through the rest of the book.

As political thrillers go does the book work? I honestly don’t know. I don’t read a lot of them. I prefer SF (that’s kind of why I review them). There were moments that I enjoyed and even parts of it that I was engaged in, but more often than not I was trying to bull through it hoping that it would turn around.

As far as the SF stuff at the end, well, I liked it a lot. There were some very cool ideas. Ideas that made me think, ideas that I would like to see explored some more. But in the end those ideas seemed rather tacked on to the political story. I think I would have preferred a much shorter story (novelette perhaps) with the same SF, but a more streamlined version of the rest of the story.

Maybe this is your cup of tea. I’ve seen some good praise for the book out there. Honestly this could be a case of just being the wrong book for the wrong reader. If you’ve liked Charles Stross’s near future thrillers (HALTING STATE and RULE 34) then I think this is more up your alley.

Recommended Age: 14+ because of the complexity of the factions, a bit of language and sexual innuendo.
Violence: Very little. Only one specific reference I can think of.
Language: Moderate. There’s language but it isn’t extreme.
Sex: None

Want to give this book a shot for yourself? Here is the link:

THE RESTORATION GAME