Gardens of the Sun by Paul McAuley
The Quiet War is over; the forces of Earth have defeated the Outers and conquered the colonies around Jupiter and Saturn. Some of the Outers escape to Uranus and Neptune while the Three Powers Alliance of Earth competes to plunder the economic and technological spoils of their newly won territories.
This hard SciFi space opera, and sequel to The Quiet War, traces the paths of various characters during the aftermath of the Quiet War. Many of these characters will be familiar to those who read the previous book, the gene wizard Avernus, the spy Ken Shinto, Sri Hong-Owen, Macy Minnot, and others.
Most of the characters are well developed and the plot lines held my interest. McAuley’s vision of the future is well worth checking out. However the one thing that keeps me from loving this book is all the scientific “explaining” that happens. I found myself skimming sections of genetic techno-babble. There are certainly readers who would enjoy this sort of realism in a SciFi novel. However I am not one of these people. I don’t want to know why or how the technology works; I want to see it in action on the page.
Overall the novel is compelling and worth a read if you don’t mind the techno-babble. Stop by the library and take a look. Thanks for reading.
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Enjoying this so far.
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