Llamafodder

This book was a very quick read; easy to keep track of even with distractions. I polished it off in a couple of days and enjoyed it. The book seems very tidy–each of the seemingly unrelated threads advances at a good pace and signals ties for later.

The book examines intelligence and self awareness from several angles, including an AI coming into its own and a bright ape that masters representation and communication, questioning exactly what level of intelligence has rights…

The threads are bright and obvious and lack the subtlety of LeGuin in Powers. Despite that, it’s a fine read, clearly the beginning of a series; I’ll keep my eye out for the next.

After hearing about this book for so long, I was glad to finally dig in and try it out. It’s a solid book, with a lot of fantastic elements and near-steampunk technology. The main characters are very well drawn, and his non-humans do a good job of being truly alien. That’s aided by their non-conventional forms– no dwarves and elves, he uses birdmen and ant-headed people instead.

I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more by China Mieville. The book didn’t encourage swiftly reading it and setting it aside, but instead encouraged lingering and inhabiting the world.

A very quick book– I gobbled it up in a few long stretches over the weekend. It has an interesting protagonist– a college student when the war broke out sixteen years ago. It’s an interesting world– several times the narrator mentions that it wasn’t the war that broke the world, it was the crazies that took advantage of the situation.

I noticed myself comparing it to Warday as I read it, noting the differing devastation from each world’s limited war. One big question missing from the Postman was “what about the rest of the world”? At least in Oregon (and the rest of his travels), no other has nation swooped in to pluck the carcass. It looks like devastation was more evenly distributed in Postman world. [Some of the biological warfare is specifically mentioned as targeting East Asia, etc., so it makes sense.]

I liked the characters and the narrow focus of the world. In some ways it seems like “the Postman” has it too easy… but it’s clear that there is a strong interest in the rest of the nation that was just lying untapped. The sci-fi element of the super soldiers was a quirky twist– not really necessary to the book, but it doesn’t detract either. In the end, I enjoyed it– it was another good David Brin novel.