I greatly enjoyed reading this book. Granted, the fact that I love the Traveller RPG and have been a fan of Marc Miller's work with the game for decades colors my rating.
The story is believable and lays out some interesting situations and particular decisions that were made. The way the main character is shown, summoned due to the use of a specific "Decider" Wafer inserted into a wafer-jack makes for an interesting way to have a 250 page novel span centuries. The writing is decent, though I wouldn't describe it as high literary craft, it was easy to read and the two or three main characters (I'm thinking of Bland and Enna here) had distinct voices, the situations were interesting, and it kept me turning the page.
A couple of things that I wasn't thrilled about, that I feel weren't explained as well as I would have liked...
First: The dreamlands/stadium sequences were a bit jarring in tone because I couldn't figure out if they actually serve a purpose or not. Perhaps this will pay off in a sequel? These don't detract from the book, but I think they are trying to humanize the protagonist and I am not sure they succeeded - I'm still ruminating on this.
Second: The ending felt very abrupt - I felt like I was in the middle of an arc, not at the end. There was no warning that (SPOILER ALERT) the assassination of Margaret II was the END in terms of the story. The narration never gives a clue as to the extent of Jonathan's story and where it will end - there is no set up that tells the reader when to expect an end. It also doesn't help that the softcover has roughly 25 pages after the "end" of the story, so I expected another 25 pages of story only to be hit with what amount to several appendices for those unfamiliar with the Traveller Universe.
Despite those two flaws, I enjoyed the book and am looking forward to a sequel if Marc chooses to write one.
|