Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

Two and a half stars. Almost okay, but too flawed to make the grade.

Newton's Wake is a mixture of free-wheeling space opera, a solid science-fictional exploration of living as a human in a post-human universe, and a traditional MacLeod political microcosm of clashing libertarian, communist, and cornucopian ideals. Each of the three strands is resolved adequately on its own, but I had been hoping they would all come together for a final unified punch. Without it, the space-operatic side of the tale lacked an explosive climax, and the political exposition was weakened by being ultimately irrelevant to the resolution. The post-human, post-singularity world was the most interesting part of the book, but a third of the story wasn't enough to do it justice. An interesting but ultimately unsatisfying read.