| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Anvil of Stars for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
MARTY SITS IN THE FRONT SEAT OF HIS FATHER'S BUICK, RIDING along a freeway in Oregon at midsummer twilight. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
MARTY SITS IN THE FRONT SEAT OF HIS FATHER'S BUICK, RIDING along a freeway in Oregon at midsummer twilight. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The presence of younger characters does not make this a "kid's book" anymore than the presence of food makes it a cookery book. You cannot hold onto any easy assumptions reading this. Greg's characters never fall back on flat cliches and his aliens are creatures of immense power, described with a breathtaking scope. No bug-eyed monsters, these!
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you like space-operas with macho technologies, politically not-so-correct attitudes, claustrophobic atmospheres, slower-than-light ships, evil alien bastards, hints at New Physics and a galaxy that looks like a desert with everyone who has his whits about him in hiding and armed to the teeth, get this book. As a bonus, you get to think about the morals of blowing away a few billions of potentially innocent aliens whose forebears might or might not have committed xenocide on your forebears.
8 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This little-appreciated book is Greg Bear's best, in my opinion. Science Fiction it may be, but its themes are as adult and rigorous as any book in any genre. It is also very well written.
An air of melancholy and despair - as well as barely suppressed terror - carries right through from start to finish, as befits the situation set up in its predecessor, The Forge of God. Bear does not shirk the philosophical implications of the story he is telling. The humans and aliens caught up in the story are overwhelmed by the mysterious technology that surrounds them, and never fully understand what is happening.
The climactic battle is very exciting, and the ambiguous outcome a satisfying, well-rounded one.
The technological explanations make enough sense to be convincing, but Bear also makes economical use of little suggestions and implications to give texture to the weird, merciless galaxy in which the story takes place. The Braid aliens, too, are a superb invention. They seem completely ahuman, unlike most alien races in sci fi.
An air of melancholy and despair - as well as barely suppressed terror - carries right through from start to finish, as befits the situation set up in its predecessor, The Forge of God. Bear does not shirk the philosophical implications of the story he is telling. The humans and aliens caught up in the story are overwhelmed by the mysterious technology that surrounds them, and never fully understand what is happening.
The climactic battle is very exciting, and the ambiguous outcome a satisfying, well-rounded one.
The technological explanations make enough sense to be convincing, but Bear also makes economical use of little suggestions and implications to give texture to the weird, merciless galaxy in which the story takes place. The Braid aliens, too, are a superb invention. They seem completely ahuman, unlike most alien races in sci fi.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Ultimately disappointing
Like many I looked forward to reading this after enjoying the Forge of God. Sadly this does not live up to its predecessor. Read more
Published 5 months ago by A. J. Waters
Has its moments but is horribly flawed.
I'll be frank here, the first hundred pages of 'Anvil of the Gods' are an interminable slog to read and I can see why many give up before getting through them. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Votadini
Mind Stretching
I bought the book on Friday afternoon and the only reason I didn't finish it on Friday night was sheer tiredness - completely unputdownable. Read more
Published on 24 Feb 2009 by CLIVE MCCOMBE
Teen angst in space
I had read "Forge of God" a number of years ago and i could not put it down-it is a great Sci Fi novel. Read more
Published on 20 Aug 2008 by Jaz Milligan
New Idea
This is one of my favourite books of all. I love the new ideas such as "noach" etc. I will read it again and again
Published on 18 April 2007 by H. J. Davies
Mesmerising
The reviewer before me has already done a very good job and I agree with him entirely. However, this book is so good and so unusual in its themes that it is worth reiterating many... Read more
Published on 12 Feb 2007 by Wilf
Not a good sequel
Taken on its own, this is a respectable book, although some of the characterisations are a bit weird, to say the least. Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2000
WOW, Bear has done it again
Greg Bear has to be one of the most imaginative writers around. How he comes up with some of his ideas are beyond me.
This book has it all. Destruction, Revenge, genocide.
Published on 27 Jan 2000 by paul@sucs.swan.ac.uk
Look elsewhere for a good read
Didn't like the concept or the characters. Couldn't work out whether this was supposed to be a kids book masquerading as Sci-Fi or Sci-Fi trying to appeal to kids. Read more
Published on 23 July 1999
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
