ospalh reviewed The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks (Fourth Realm Trilogy, #1)
Not the book the author probably wanted to write
2 stars
★★☆☆☆ not ★☆☆☆☆ for the book he wanted to write but didn’t: A warning about digital data collection and surveillance. Sort of a Cory Doctorow story, Beyond Fear and bits and pieces from the Cryptonomicon.
That is not what we have here, tho. The surveillance gets a name, the Vast Machine, which is inappropriate, as that implies an aim and a central entity, which aren’t there. Anyway, the Vast Machine is only mentioned incidentally in this book. Instead this is a mix of a Da Vinci code (the cover of mine is right there) with a large shadowy evil organization, and some newage other dimensions crap. All of it quite badly done.
Then there are the Harlequins. Murderous »bodyguards« of the newage folks (the Travvelers) that ar supposed to be the good guys, but aren’t. They are only slightly less evil than the other side, the Brethren or Tabula.
Lots …
★★☆☆☆ not ★☆☆☆☆ for the book he wanted to write but didn’t: A warning about digital data collection and surveillance. Sort of a Cory Doctorow story, Beyond Fear and bits and pieces from the Cryptonomicon.
That is not what we have here, tho. The surveillance gets a name, the Vast Machine, which is inappropriate, as that implies an aim and a central entity, which aren’t there. Anyway, the Vast Machine is only mentioned incidentally in this book. Instead this is a mix of a Da Vinci code (the cover of mine is right there) with a large shadowy evil organization, and some newage other dimensions crap. All of it quite badly done.
Then there are the Harlequins. Murderous »bodyguards« of the newage folks (the Travvelers) that ar supposed to be the good guys, but aren’t. They are only slightly less evil than the other side, the Brethren or Tabula.
Lots of the details are just wrong. Some should have been caught by the editors, others are just ignorance and no research. The main rotor of a helicopter is called the »big (or main) propeller« twice. One guy explicitly has a semiauto rifle, and then changes switches to full auto fire. Liquid helium is apparently a viscous, green fluid that you keep in basically a large aquarium, without insulation. Quantum computers aren’t used to break prime number based encryption, but for newage other dimensions stuff.
