Cosmonaut Keep: Bk.1 (Engines of Light) (Paperback)

Although that sounds very negative, there is another factor to consider with Ken MacLeod. The continual feeling as you read through the book that he is much smarter than you are, and knows a great deal more about politics, past and present, than the average person is apt to. Perhaps, as Iain Banks has noted, it's the monumentally assured nature of his prose that keeps you trying, even when it gets heavy going on the grey cells. There is an underlying feeling that he's telling a great story, and that you should do him the justice of reading on and really trying to understand what is happening. And in the end it does pay off. Even though I look back on both those of his novels I have now read without fully comprehending why certain events took place, I remember then in a good light and as damned good pieces of science fiction. His imagination perhaps sometimes runs away with him, and so there is less time spent on description, and reminding the reader why a character is acting as they are, and going over again (to clarify rather than dully repeat) what plot revelations have occurred.

Peter F. Hamilton has said the prose are "sleek and fast as the technology it describes" - and this clearly leads to an excellent story in the long run. But you may feel a little left behind during the course of the journey. In the end, however, MacLeod is well worth the effort and proves ultimately rewarding.

The shifting back and forth between two eras may disconcert some. Again, I felt that this element was more annoying to the American mind than to the English.

Of course, this is the first of a trilogy, and we'll just have to see where MacLeod is leading us, won't we?

This is not a great Ken MacLeod novel - but by his standards that makes it still a more than halfway decent piece of science fiction. It is Golden Age sci-fi/space opera in its main concerns (god-like ancient aliens with an apparent Erik Von Daniken complex, interstellar commerce, space drives and so forth), but also typically MacLoed in its concerns with economic and political ideologies and agendas (growth capitalism versus steady state socialism). It has echoes of his earlier novels - bit of the narrative on the planet Mingulay read like "The Sky Road", bits of the parallel narrative in the 21st century have echoes of "The Star Fraction" and "The Stone Canal". As a consequence, it feels a bit like re-treading old territory, but in other ways this is a lighter novel, less dark and complex than his first four novels, more open and accessible to the first time MacLeod reader.

The main problem, as the start of a new "sequence", is that it simply does not quite grab you the way to should. It's good, but not outstanding, inventive, but not really all that original. And, some of the characterisation, and in particular the love story sub-plots are rather on the juvenile side - catering (it seems to me) to male adolescent fantasy.

On the other hand, it throws up enough interesting puzzles (although the answers to some of them were obvious from within a few chapters) to make me want to read the next instalment. I only hope that "Dark Light" is more engaging and challenging.