Hehe, everyone is making their posts the night of, aren't they? >.<

Anyway, I suppose I share the sentiments of my fellows about the length of the book; a lot of drawn out technological explanations contributed to it, but what else are you expecting with space opera? The convoluted names of everything [deepness isn't just in the sky with stuff named the Unthinking Depths. the Beyond and the Transcend], the scope of the plot, the conflict between different groups, a bit of familial drama, sinister illness, the future of an entire species hanging in the balance; all of these have evolved to be very stereotypical of space opera. I guess the over abundance of tech-talk went the way of Episode I [midichlorians anyone?] and can tend to do a lot to demystify a good experience. 

However I think that the intensity of the plot is enough to balance out the denser parts of the book, once you plow through it. 

Die Emergent Scum!

When I first set out to read this, I thought that this must be better than the last one, please let it be better! Well so far it's been better, but it's still slow and way too long and it doesn't help that I have so many books at home that I'd rather be reading. Then I got to the point when the true purpose of the mindrot disease was revealed, and that pissed me off. So now I read on with the hope that the Emergents will get what's coming to them, those stupid meatbags. Especially Tomas Nau, what with the way he caused the death of Qiwi's mom and then covered it up, then took advantage of her, oh he needs to die slowly for that.

Finale to "Sky"

Well the book was overly slow and many many pages could have been deleted from the whole book.
I am kind of in the middle about how the Spiders were written as being people, the only difference was that they were spiders, everything else about them was talked as if they were people.
The "Finale" where the supposed big battle would take place between the Traders and the Spiders, Vs the Emergents was very sad, But Pham knew that that was when it would happpen. Over all I am glad that I read this book is was pretty well done, excpet for some parts that could have been taken out and whatnot.
The love that was placed in there was very low, which was good, the last book we read had randomness in it, and this was something that wasn't important but had to be put in there because it is human nature to love.

The finality of the darkness.

[Note: I e-mailed Paul and he said to post the blogs from A Deepness In The Sky here, so here it is].

Some spoilers ahead maybe?


This book was perhaps one of the longest which shouldn't have been. I wonder if there is actually a reason for this, if we were meant to feel the angst and helplessness the Qeng Ho felt; although on my end it just transferred to borement.
That being said I think it had a good plot, it was sound albeit the weird things such as the flying kittens (seriously? Seriously...) and Trixia wanting to be semi-focused.
I think that it had a lot of cliché points, such as the end of Nau in the hands of Qiwi; it was finalized (finally!) and I felt better, but possibly this is the point of Space Opera.

I did enjoy the description of the plants Dr. Ali came up with though, and much of that was well-described; as well as the spiders' world, I thought of them as persons and I believe that is how the author wanted them to be.
I did get a sense of Star Trek while reading some of this book, but it was different even though similar.

Now the localizers, they were certainly a piece of work to come up with, don't they die? I mean don't they get destroyed or are they biomechanical somehow? I kept thinking that as Pham Nuwen seemed to be almost godly with them, also, someone please explain to me the anti-gravity, it was just somehow a part of some material or did it just occur naturally in the planet at a certain place? There are things like these that are fuzzy for me, but I suppose this is not hard sci-fi.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book more towards the end when the wait was FINALLY over and everything unfolded, otherwise I think this book should have been shorter, perhaps it was also so the Spiders could develop, even so I liked this book more than Cosmonaut Keep.

holy wack unlyrical lyrics..
okay so first of all im so confused by all the different relationships in the book. why God why? are there so many different, confusing and all over the place relationships?
also, when i first read about elizabeth's description i was so turned on!!!lol. she sounds hot!!!

Like being cut in half

Well, its pretty hard to find a place to start but I gotta say that this book is divisive in a lot of ways. Now that's a statement that doesn't really mean much so I'll expand on it. Obvious divisions in the book include the switching between stories every chapter, changing between third and first person every time, and as many have pointed out before me: the book is divided between a slow beginning and launching into action much later.

At first when I was reading the book the constant switching around and unexplained phenomena just had me confused more than anything. Communists to traders, gravity skiffs to wet tech, hackers to sailors. It was pretty much just a sea of unintelligible text that I couldn't figure out what to do with. As I read on however the settings, characters, technology, and spacial time distortion all kind of filed into place in a way that made them easy to understand; instead of having an supernatural or unearthly feel, everything just felt very familiar.

I ended up really loving the switching between near future and distant future. I don't think I'd have faired well reading just on or the other. They had the feel of a spy novel and a fantasy adventure story. If I had to read one or the other I'd probably have lost interest but when combined it allows Cosmonaut Keep have a fairly dynamic feel to it and it helped me enjoy both styles. One is as technical, witty, and the atmosphere is dramatic and tense. The other is more laid back about fantastic technology and it allows for more inspection of history over current events. The story with Gregor Cairns also had better imagery I thought and I found myself more drawn into the alien setting of the distant future than the paranoid and conspiracy heavy hacker's world. I'd think I would understand the near future earth better than the deep space story but the writing kind of defied my intuition.

In the end I feel a bit ambiguous when I try to express how I feel about the book. It was a tangled, horrid mess but I kinda think: so were the lives of almost every character main character, so it balances itself out. Jadey is an American Agent deep in commie territory with her cover blown; Matt has to flee the planet because he very quickly got into other people's data way over his head; Gregor has to sort out his romantic, professional, and family lives as the collapse into each other; and Elizabeth is flung into an inept adventure of grand scale and even grander consequence and all she can think about is her perpetually clueless crush. The only character who seems to know exactly where his towel is would be the Salasso, the stoned saur at the back of the airship. Telling a story like this in a strait forward and clear way would just be wrong.

Anyway, I guess my final review is that this book is confusing, creative, and as an end result: highly amusing. Good but not epic. At least the pot smoking dinosaurs didn't disappoint at all.

An Author Stoned

Throughout the course of this book, I've noticed a lot of trouble with organization and delivery of information, among other things. At first I just thought the author was just trying to do something different, that it was his intention to let us sort things out ourselves instead of putting it all on the table in plain english. Even that, however, does not excuse the shoddy job of putting this thing together. Then it hit me: all the casual pot-smoking, the alien conspiracies, and the government cover-ups and corruption all led me to one conclusion. And that conclusion is that it's highly probable that Ken Macleod is a total stoner. Not only that, but he could've been baked while writing this thing, which would explain a lot. I'm not against the green herb at all, having had some before, but c'mon man, business before pleasure! There's a reason that ideas that you get while high sound stupid when you pull yourself together, and that reason is that the smoke chokes your brain, making you into a stupid person for awhile. Not the best state of mind to be writing a book in.
I guess I'm expected to write a review of some sort for this book, so here it is. The story was complex and not fluidly organized, something that I as well as others have not taken well to. It was also slow in the beginning but did get better halfway through, that's one thing it's got going for it at least. When it comes to slow beginnings Stephen King is the worst so at least Macleod isn't that bad.
The setting of the high-tech near-future and the low-tech distant future seemed fairly original from my standpoint, a plus for this book.
The characters weren't completely shallow, however they appeared to be only fleshed out to the extent that Macleod could say that he gave them depth and not be lying, kind of half-assed really. I don't care one way or another, I'm just not accustomed to it that's all.
We really could've done without the romance factor here and reading about sex was kind of awkward, but at least he didn't get too descriptive about it most of the time.
My final rating for this story is 3 out of 5 stars, and my advice to anyone reading this is to not decide whether or not to read this book based on the opinions of one man, official critic or not. It did win some kind of award after all, that's got to be worth something.