Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Yesterday I finished The Armies of Memory by John Barnes.

It turns out this is part of a series, but I don't think I've read any of the other books in the series but I might look for them now.

The setting for this book is very complicated, too complicated to summarize here, but it has some interesting new twists on standard science fiction settings. The book also has some well drawn characters and a plot that is deeper and more interesting than most.

For me, John Barnes is a difficult writer to judge. I really like some of his books, like this one, and really dislike some of his books, like Kaleidoscope Century.

1 comment:

J Thomas said...

John Barnes always has interesting characters, and almost always interesting plots. He couldn't do much with "infinte worlds" in _Finity_, but usually he does very well.

_Kaleidoscope Century_ had a bad guy as the main character, and you never got a good look at any particularly good guys. That made it kind of repellant for me. Usually he has some interesting balances and insights on morality.