Engine City

[redbird]

Just a subjective "wow, cool" for worldbuilding and characters. And yes, agrumer, you're right that that's a better joke than any in Dark Light and that it would be a serious spoiler.

MacLeod does cool things with relativity and the ways information spreads at light-speed, not just as internal-to-the-characters'-lives, but with narrative structure. And I think there's room for a sequel, both in the "what comes next?" sense and in lots of things we don't learn--I'd like to get back to Mingulay, for example, and I'd like to learn more about the other "Adamic races". I have no idea of whether he's planning one.

Comments

[avram]

One of my peeves about MacLeod: Both of his series to date, the Engines of Light books and the Fall Revolution books, have shown us sentient and civilized non-human primates. But in both cases, they're pretty much window-dressing, with no non-human hominids having any significant roles. I think one pithkie secretary in Dark Light is the only one of those characters to even get a name, or more than a word or two of dialog.

[redbird]

One of the selkies in Engine City has a name, Khaphthash, and a significant amount of dialogue, even if you don't count sign language and drawings.

That said, I tend to agree with you.

[avram]

I'd forgotten about the selkies, but they're aliens anyway. The native hominids -- supposedly part of the viewpoint cultures -- are the ones we ought to be hearing more from.