Ken MacLeod - The Stone Canal **** & The Sky Road **1/2
It's the summer holidays so I'm getting a fair amount read for a change. Finished off the 2nd and 4th books in Ken MacLeod "Communists in Space" quartet (my title not his. What is it about Communist SF - just reading Thigmoo which takes a similar stance). I really enjoyed the first book - The Star Fraction, and I'd say I enjoyed each book less as the quartet progresses. One of the main problems with The Sky Road is that it is verging on technofeudalism - one of my pet hates. Stone Canal also handles the dual time period narrative better than Sky Road - and works better because one of its narratives is our present.
Having read the first of his Engines of Light books, and abandoned the second where the lost colony/feudalist bit gets played even more, I'm sorry to say I'm going off him as an author. Hey even Iain Banks has shown feudal tendencies - obviously something in the Scottish water ( the Scotch? ).
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