Souls in the Great Machine (Hardcover)

But... It's an absolutely gripping read which I was saving for a long-distance air flight but found I had half-finished before taking off. McMullen knows his science (the "calculor" is an inspired concept) and the questionable bits such as "the call" are well enough integrated to suspend disbelief. Unlike many books, the characters actually change and develop over time, though the abrupt switch of one key player from goody to baddy is never explained - if, like Charles Sheffield, McMullen were to rewrite his books for later editions, this should be a top priority.

But enough of the carping. Compared to the over-hyped Alistair McLeod, SITGM shows McMullen to be capable of developing a good old-style hard SF saga set in an area he knows and loves. It would be churlish to give it anything less than 5 stars.

Oh, by the way, if you see this in a bookstore, read the page-and-a-half prologue to provide a taste of the book. If that grabs you, buy it from wherever. I'm getting the two sequels right now.

The worldbuilding is quite impressive. Set almost two millennia from now, the world is still recovering from a nuclear winter. In Australia a low-tech civilization putters along, with power resting in the hands of librarians. A new head overlibrarian is elected and brings change, as she ruthlessly builds "The Calculator", a primitive computer using imprisoned people as circuits, and extends a series of communication towers across the various fiefdoms and emirates. The initial exploration of this is quite interesting, but as the overlibrarian's power grows, McMullen starts adding more and more storylines to the mix.

It seems that an ancient sunshade being formed by nanotechnology is threatening to block out the sun and initiate a new Ice Age, unless the overlibrarian can do something. Then there's the barbarian horde being mustered by one of her former protégés—for reasons that are never really clear to me, other than the need to have a big war in the book. Then there's the mysterious force that sweeps across the land intermittently, causing all who aren't tied down to walk due south forever. Then there's a whole genetics subplot. Not to mention an awfully confusing series of romances and affairs, you really do need a scorecard to keep track of everyone.

The ideas are all individually really interesting, it's just that there are too many of them at once and the characters are too flimsy to carry them. Coincidence comes into play all too often, as characters are constantly running into each other, and too many of them are cast from the same obsessive mold and act altogether arbitrarily. It doesn't help that there are abrupt leaps of time in the middle of chapters, out of nowhere will pop up the declaration that five years has passed, for example. Also, the book is badly in need of a map. Geography is an integral part of the plot, and without a map to clarify things, the reader is often literally lost.

I salute the McMullen's imagination for ideas, but this book is just too long and haphazard to properly enjoy. I doubt I'll be seeking out it's sequels, The Miocene Arrow and Eyes of the Calculor.