After the 'ye olden dayes' slog of The Baroque Cycle, I decided it was time to get some more hardcore sci-fi, so I picked up Charles Stross' 'Singularity Sky' on the strength of the title; having lapped up all of Vernor Vinge's books and essays, I wanted more more more singularity-related fiction, and this proved to almost be the ticket.
Like almost everything in these information-saturated days, Singularity Sky starts off a little slow, and at no points does the sci-fi really grip you by the short and curlies - we read about the effects of a technological singularity on an unsuspecting population, but it's more of an unexplored aside to the main story, which is a nice old-school scifi adventure, with the relationship between the two protagonists providing most of the incentive to read on.
While Stross is great with words, it feels like he wrote with someone standing over his shoulder with a whip at the ready for any time he did something remotely unexpected; throughout the book you can see the hooks for clever little plot twists, but they're never reeled in, and so the story proceeds in a fairly straight line with no knock-you-on-the-floor suprises.
Here's where it gets difficult - Singularity Sky is a more than satisfactory read and I'll probably curl up with the sequel, 'Iron Sunrise', but I find it a hard book to gush about - sci-fi lovers may find it a little flat, and readers new to the genre are much better off with Asimov, Clarke, Vinge or Stephenson. You can probably best consider it 'easy-reading' sci-fi - suitable for a quick and dirty distraction without the mental work of some of the heftier novels out there.
Next book on the pile is another recommendation from Slashdot - Iain M. Banks' 'Look To Windward'. I've never read any of his work before, and I know it's not the first in the series, but the darn sleeve didn't mention which one was.
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