It entirely escaped my memory that, while on my cruise, I finished Elizabeth Bear's new novel, Ancestral Night , and hadn't managed to review it yet, because I spent so much time gushing about it while on the boat. Like, honestly, for a couple of days it was my opening conversational gambit: "Hi! Have you read Ancestral Night ? Yes? Let's talk about it! No? You should read it right now!" So yes, this is going to be a positive review, in case you hadn't guessed. As a fan of Star Trek and Ian Banks' Culture novels, I can absolutely see the underpinnings of the Synarche (and the dark mirror of the Freeporters) present in this novel, which I desperately hope is about to become a series. The main characters in the story are two humans, two cats, a giant preying mantis, and an AI and all of them have hidden fracture-points and surprising secrets that are hidden, sometimes even from the person who's hiding them. And like the best parts of ST and Culture s
An occasional thought about my life in IT and the world. Mostly the former, though.