Mainspring

          

       Okay, so the rundown is as follows. For all the lavish, bright, interesting points of Mainspring, Jay Lake's novel falls flat for the most part. It's rushed in the good parts and padded everywhere else, the characters don't seem to matter other than as props, and the main character doesn't really show enough growth to make his journey make sense. It's a loud, empty mess that might be a good read if you take it slow and get it out from the library, but I cannot recommend in normal circumstances. It's got good worldbuilding, but that's not enough to save it.

More, as always, below.

Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom

            Okay, so the rundown is as follows. Chung Kuo is a future history on an epic, operatic scale. The book traces the start of the "War of Two Directions", a conflict between the Confucianist stasis of the ruling Chinese empire and the upper-class Europeans who wish for progress, change, and to take back their birthright. The book features a huge cast of characters and a scope that, for the first book in a seven-book series, shows remarkable restraint and control while still spanning slightly over a decade in time. 

               The good points are that it takes next to no time at all to get off the ground and manages to cover the massive amount of territory despite a small lull in the action after the prologue, that it follows a huge cast of complex characters without ever once feeling like it's repeating itself or reusing characters, and that it keeps up a level of tension without having to resort too much to excessive vulgarity. It also keeps just enough uncertainty in the plot to make it interesting. The good guys are never on the verge of winning, and neither are the bad guys. And both sides are complex enough not to be "good" or "bad", but to be driven by their own motivations. Except one.

             The bad parts are an ending that seems to arbitrarily set up the cliffhanger for the next book just so one side doesn't seem to be in too much of a position of strength, and a single character, Major Howard deVore. de Vore seems to be an unrepentant monster, manipulating both sides of the conflict for little more than his own gratification. He appears to derive pleasure from human suffering and sick power games, and thus stands out against the rest of the cast. Also, there are two or three scenes that get really brutal and nasty, so I feel like I should warn that they're there.

More, as always, below.

The Bone Season

         

         

               Okay, so the rundown is as follows: This is not a good book. It is well-written, but it is a bad book. The characters aren't really that compelling, the world isn't strong, the only thing that seems to work for it is the worldbuilding, which is both plot and character-agnostic. Stay away from this one, though watch Samantha Shannon, because she could very easily become an author of some renown if she fixes her issues with pacing, characterization, and all the rest. 

                   Don't believe the hype, don't buy into the curiosity, just leave this one where you found it, and maybe look for Shannon's next book. She's got seven books planned and this is the first one, so hopefully she'll get better. More, as always, below

Leviathan Wakes

                

         Okay, so the rundown is as follows: Leviathan Wakes is a space opera somewhere between Consider Phlebas and a Cronenberg flick, the story of a group of desperate and damned people who have to figure out what's going on and why before the human race brings itself to extinction by playing with toys it doesn't really understand.  It has some incredibly gruesome imagery, some of the tightest writing in a space opera since the late Iain M. Banks left the field. The plot weaves its way between sci-fi noir and gritty starfaring, finally letting the two collide and showing just how out of place each genre is in the other's story. Jim Holden and Detective Miller are two very strong protagonists, and watching them bounce off one another is wonderful.
            The bad is that there is no unified story here, but two stories that manage to fit together. There's also a very lopsided way of going about the whole antagonist thing, at one point having them be a faceless group of high-powered ship breakers and in the last act having them be incredibly un-threatening, to the point that the reveal in the third section of the book is decidedly underwhelming, even with the stakes being raised in each successive chapter. 
              But in total, this is a book well worth reading and buying. James S.A. Corey is a pair of authors to watch, and you should give them your undivided attention.