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The Quiet War
Written by Paul McAuley
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Average Score:
78(8)
Twenty-third century Earth, ravaged by climate change, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by a few powerful families and their green saints. Millions of people are imprisoned in teeming cities; millions more labour on Pharaonic projects to rebuild ruined ecosystems. On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the Outers, descendants of refugees from Earth's repressive regimes, have constructed a wild variety of self-sufficient cities and settlements: scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts; the last outposts of every kind of democratic tradition. The fragile detente between the Outer cities and the dynasties of Earth is threatened by the ambitions of the rising generation of Outers, who want to break free of their cosy, inward-looking pocket paradises, colonise the rest of the Solar System, and drive human evolution in a hundred new directions. On Earth, many demand pre-emptive action against the Outers before it's too late; others want to exploit the talents of their scientists and gene wizards.Amid campaigns for peace and reconciliation, political machinations, crude displays of military might, and espionage by cunningly wrought agents, the two branches of humanity edge towards war . ..
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Book Details
Science Fiction
Paperback,
Published
by Pyr on September 22, 2009
First Published by Gollancz in 2008
ISBN-10 1591027810
ISBN-13 978-1591027812
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Reviews
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SF Site
| Rich Horton
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Review Rating: 100
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This novel is one of the best SF novels of the past couple of years. It is fullthroatedly SFnal, distinctly "hard."
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SF Site
| Paul Kincaid
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Review Rating: 80
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[...] this first novel suggests that we are looking at a work that demonstrates how fresh, relevant and engaging the great imaginative sweep of planetary sf can be.
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SF Site
| Greg L. Johnson
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Review Rating: 80
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...a compelling, insightful, and, yes, thrilling look at a future headed towards war.
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Stephen Hunts SF Crownest
| Gareth D. Jones
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Review Rating: 80
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It's a tale well worth taking the time to get into and enjoying McCauley's vision of the future.
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The Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation
| Jonathan Cowie
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Review Rating: 80
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That novel had a solid SF concept at its heart from which streams of sense of wonder flowed inexorably gushed.
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The Zone
| Duncan Lawie
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Review Rating: 80
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Fortunately, as this book opens out from the claustrophobic first section, it also deepens, revealing context and explaining the origins of much of what occurs in the novel's present.
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SF Signal
| John DeNardo
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Review Rating: 70
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[...] for a space opera steeped in political ideologies, it worked marvelously well to hold my personal interest.
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Strange Horizons
| Abigail Nussbaum
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Review Rating: 60
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the novel's ending isn't nearly open-ended enough to create the suspense that'll whet its readers' appetite for the next installment, and since the story itself is not much more than enjoyable, I for one don't feel any compulsion to read the next chapter.
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SFRevu
| Mel Jacob
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...non-stop action and switches between viewpoint characters keep the readers turning pages.
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