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Count to a Trillion (Count to the Eschaton Sequence #1)

3.07 of 5 stars 3.07 · rating details · 257 ratings · 77 reviews

Hundreds of years in the future, after the collapse of the Western world, young Menelaus Illation Montrose grows up in what was once Texas as a gunslinging duelist for hire. But Montrose is also a mathematical genius—and a romantic who dreams of a future in which humanity rises from the ashes to take its place among the stars.

The chance to help usher in that future comes w...more

Hardcover, 364 pages

Published December 20th 2011 by Tor Books

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Aug 25, 2012 Sarah Jamison rated it 1 of 5 stars

The only lousy thing about reading on the kindle, other than having to remember to charge it, is that you can't throw a book across the room. It is the privilege of every reader to get really fed up with a book and throw it across the room; then take a couple deep breaths, get up, go get the book, and get back to reading. As it stands, when I finished this book last night, large confused about how it was going to be over, I didn't throw it. I shut the kindle off. I shut the kindle cover. I set i...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Darrin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: post-apocalyptic-fiction, science-fiction, political

The book felt more like concepts and ideas held together loosely with a plot and characters. I did like the main character, Menelaus Montrose enough to continue reading the book to the end but in the end I was left thinking, "Well, so?" and "That's it?" Generally not the feeling one wants to be left with after finishing a book.

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Jan 14, 2013 Danielle Parker rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have to confess, about mid-way through the first in John C. Wright’s latest series, I had a weird fantasy pop into my head. I was in the audience, next to Robert Heinlein, with the good Dr. Asimov on the other side. Asimov was chortling, and Heinlein chuckling, while we passed a big tub of popcorn (real butter, of course) between us. Up on the stage in a conga line were other famous science fiction scientist writers: Edward Lerner, Vernor Vinge, Rudy Rucker, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford and many...more I have to confess, about mid-way through the first in John C. Wright’s latest series, I had a weird fantasy pop into my head. I was in the audience, next to Robert Heinlein, with the good Dr. Asimov on the other side. Asimov was chortling, and Heinlein chuckling, while we passed a big tub of popcorn (real butter, of course) between us. Up on the stage in a conga line were other famous science fiction scientist writers: Edward Lerner, Vernor Vinge, Rudy Rucker, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford and many more I didn’t recognize.

Somehow Magic Mike got into this hallucination, because all the dancing scientists were ripping open their shirts (all had awesome pectorals, and Vernor Vinge had the cutest geek glasses: sorry, I couldn’t help that). All were shouting their come-ons. “Bell’s Theorem!” “Cardy’s a-Theorem!” “E=mc2!” (I’m afraid he was one of the old ones up there). “Hellmann-Feynman Theorem!” And more. It was a madhouse.

And… what? One of the dancing scientists was shouting in Latin. And sure enough, it was a gatecrasher: John C. Wright, more than holding his own with the flashing eggheads, while he ripped his lawyer’s pinstripe suit and shouted. “Acta exteriora iudicant interiora secreta!” “Nemo contra factum suum venire potest!” I couldn’t understand a word, but I can tell you, it was pretty cool, especially the pectorals.

As you can guess from this, John C. Wright has joined the ranks of the author-scientists who just can’t let a good story stand in the way of some come-on scientific exposition. I think I skipped about a quarter of his latest, Count to a Trillion, because Mr. Wright worked hard to prove what a physics professor could geek-speak, a lawyer-author could one-up and then some. I really did need the flashing pectorals to help me through, and alas, the only sex I got was way to the end of the four hundred plus pages, and a bit too coyly macho-man and blonde-princess for my taste. Though I suspect the Machiavellian blonde was laying on the cute for her caveman.

We start the story in a future ruined America, where Texans still speak corn pone and wear big guns, and everything’s gone to heck, so youngsters have to work as slave labor to get their next meal. Our genius youngster, who spouts the mathematical theorems from infancy, gets a job as a lawyer/gunslinger… a wonderfully apt conjunction that made me laugh. The tongue-in-cheek gunslinger is literal in this case.

While Menelaus Montrose is gunning down luckless opponents and calculating trajectories of killing projectiles with his mathematical mind, he comes to the attention of a rich prince (of Monaco, the gambling kingdom, no less). The rich prince fairy godfather sends him to university to get an education (though Montrose hangs on to his Texas corn pone speech and he-man attitude for dear life).

Montrose then gets a berth on an enormously expensive spaceship headed to a rare anti-matter star. The star’s anti-matter promises unlimited energy for starved Earth, and while the astronauts are mining the figurative gold, they have a chance to figure out the meaning of a strange alien monument also left at the artificial star.

Montrose, however, doesn’t think humanity has the brains for that difficult task. Man must become Post Human Man. So once on the starship, he injects himself with a weird concoction that should amp his intelligence up into the post human… which it apparently does.
But he goes insane first, is put into cold storage, and wakes up again, many years later, in an entirely altered Earth. And no one has figured out the Monument. But it looks like they’d better. Bad Super Aliens may be on the way to enslave the apes.

There is good stuff in this story: John C. Wright’s characteristic and wonderful grand sweep of vision being the best. The man draws Big Pictures. But the tiresome geek-speak inserted into too many pages maddened me.

Nor do Mr. Wright’s characters connect in this one. Montrose is a less-than-believable, less-than-likeable character for this reader. Supposedly he’s superhuman in his intelligence, but in fact he reminds me of a genius I once worked with in one of my own high tech jobs: book-smart but unable to find his own pinkie in terms of common sense. The love interest, the equally superhuman smart Princess Raina, is painted in such overdone superlatives the reader is sure they must have finally nailed those sex hormones that overturn all rationality in this far future. She knows how to punch the caveman’s buttons, at least, and those buttons are still in apparent fine working order in spite of the caveman’s triple (quadruple?) digit IQ.

I consider Mr. Wright one of the best and most promising authors in the genre, with a rare ability to write true space opera and grand fantasy. But without a doubt, this is his worst so far. Please, Mr. Wright. You don’t have to flash the geek at us. You don’t need to prove lawyers are the smartest, or the fastest on the draw. We just want your wonderful stories.
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Nov 12, 2012 Rj Meyers rated it 1 of 5 stars

In summary: A few neat ideas, but clunky dialogue, too much exposition, bad pacing, only one memorable character (Montrose), creepy views of gender roles of men and women, futuristic sausage fest, and lots of math-babble. A pretty quick read. Too bad I bought it. Suppose I'll give it away next time I donate books.

Review:

Two neat ideas can be found in this book: 1) The overall setting regarding aliens and humanity's place in the galaxy and (2) the gunslinging technologies. Not much else new to be...more In summary: A few neat ideas, but clunky dialogue, too much exposition, bad pacing, only one memorable character (Montrose), creepy views of gender roles of men and women, futuristic sausage fest, and lots of math-babble. A pretty quick read. Too bad I bought it. Suppose I'll give it away next time I donate books.

Review:

Two neat ideas can be found in this book: 1) The overall setting regarding aliens and humanity's place in the galaxy and (2) the gunslinging technologies. Not much else new to be found here, though the book is chock full of tried-and-true scifi concepts.

However...

The first 100 pages or so were very slow, and there were a few places where I had to re-read something because the plot twist or dialogue or even the spatial location/setting change didn't make sense. The dialogue throughout the book felt clunky and unrealistic, even if the lines were being spoken by geniuses or post-human intelligences. Way too much exposition, as the author seems to have never learned the "show, don't tell" rule. Some completely unnecessary exposition (not even relevant to the rest of the book) that just wastes the reader's time as well.

There are only three characters of any significance in the book: The protagonist (Montrose) who, while odd and difficult to identify with, was at least interesting; Del Azarchel, who was pretty much a cookie-cutter friend turned enemy and romantic rival (and boy was that romance handled awkwardly); and Princess Rania, who is pulled out of thin air halfway through the story and has a personality that would blow away in a light breeze.

A huge problem with the book is the almost complete lack of female characters. There are only three women even mentioned in the entire book. Montrose's mother is first, and she's really just in the prologue and has some rather pessimistic and stereotyped views on men and women. There's also a woman who is married to a guy that Montrose kills early in the novel, but she's only mentioned... twice? The other female character is a princess, Rania, and she is introduced as a sort of ideal woman (perfect beauty, superhuman intelligence) about halfway through the book. She's completely two dimensional and has no real personality of her own. Anyone of any importance (space crew, security details, imperial retainers, etc.) is male. The way men and women are portrayed in this book actually made me check the copyright date on it about 1/2 of the way through, as I could have sworn that it was written in the 50s or early 60s. It actually took me out of the story and distracted me while reading, which is why I've noted it so thoroughly here. It was a giant sausage fest.

Finally, I generally liked the idea of the Monument, but the knowledge encoded within it extended much too far into developing universal social, psychological, economic, evolutionary, and political systems in a very hand-wavy manner ("superhuman intelligences" can figure it out). Fine, but this was another check-the-copyright-date moment, since it again felt like something out of the 50s. The math pseudo-babble that the main characters pull out every 30 or so pages was also just that--babble. It's like in Star Trek when they "invert the subspace warp field to create a positive tachyon field." All the words have meaning, but they're strung together incoherently.(less)

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Sep 03, 2012 Chris rated it 1 of 5 stars

It's been a long time since I've read a book that, as far as 94% into the text, I wonder, "Enough with the exposition, when's the action about to start?"

This novel had some really intriguing ideas, and certainly some entertaining angles and food for thought, but there was a vapid plot, infuriatingly weak characters, and so little to really offer the reader that I can't but walk away feeling cheated. I expected the heavy hand of physics and higher math to greet me, and I expected incredible longi...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Adam rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm just going to go ahead and click "hide entire review because of spoilers." There. Much better.

Now then, where were we. Ah, yes. Count to A Trillion by John C. Wright. What an odd book this is.

It starts off as a high-concept sci-fi of the first order. Humankind discovers a monument orbiting* an antimatter star. (A real star, too, which is kind of cool.) The monument has a message from other beings encoded in higher mathematics. And the contents of the star will change human destiny.

...Ok....more

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Jun 02, 2012 Michael Latorra rated it 4 of 5 stars

As a fan of Wright's GOLDEN AGE trilogy, I was eager to read his new science fiction novel. Going in, I did not know if this was a singleton or the beginning of a new multi-volume work. It is the latter. And that's a good thing, because the sweep and depth of the story requires much more elaboration. As an author, Wright's strengths are as a stylist and a thinker. His prose glistens at the sentence level. It's a pleasure to read. His erudition and intelligence give a depth to his science fiction...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Tim Hicks rated it 2 of 5 stars

So many good ideas wasted! This book needed a co-author who can write characters and dialogue.

The edition I read also desperately needed a copy editor, because I saw at least 50 typos, slips and inconsistencies. I blame the publisher for that, though. not the author.

Menelaus is such a klutz it's amazing. Genius? Ha! Naive simpleton would be more accurate. He's almost laughable at times, and don't get me started on his attitudes about women.

Del Azarchel is presented as a complex character, the...more

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May 21, 2012 Ketan Shah rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A lot of big ideas ,some of them interesting ,but framed around a story that didn't make me care an iota for any of the characters involved. The story is essentially about a man who artificially increases his own intelligence ,and his attempts to decipher the message hidden in an enigmatic alien artifact,so I was OK with the swathes of math speak that appeared in every third paragraph. However it's harder to forgive an author who makes you lose interest in his story.This is supposedly the first...more

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Jun 16, 2013 Mary Catelli rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

The beginning of a trilogy, so be forewarned. It sweeps off into a tale which, by the end of it, justifies the scope.

It opens with a formative incident from the hero Menelaus Montrose's childhood: his harsh mother forces him to delete anything she deems non-educational from his library --a thing of fabric -- including things he had worked quite hard to pay for.

The novel itself begins with his trip into space, where Menelaus is part of an interstellar expedition to an anti-matter star with a non...more The beginning of a trilogy, so be forewarned. It sweeps off into a tale which, by the end of it, justifies the scope.

It opens with a formative incident from the hero Menelaus Montrose's childhood: his harsh mother forces him to delete anything she deems non-educational from his library --a thing of fabric -- including things he had worked quite hard to pay for.

The novel itself begins with his trip into space, where Menelaus is part of an interstellar expedition to an anti-matter star with a non-human artifact, the Monument. (Slower than light; this is an Einsteinian universe.) Between their departure from Earth and their actual arrival at the ship, where he slips into a legal loophole and performs an experiment on himself, to augment his intelligence. What else? The difficulties in deciphering the Monument are clear; even their carefully gathered collection of mathematical geniuses might not manage it.

It works, unfortunately, because it has side-effects, leading to only startling glimpses of the journey. Flashbacks to his past reveal the post-apocalyptic world in which he grew up and how he came to be on the crew -- he was an anomoly there, in some respects -- and his history as a lawyer, which is to say duelist.

He wakes to discover he is in the future, and had been taken to the star and back, and now the rest of the crew are effectively masters of the earth with the anti-matter they brought back. Such of them as did return. They also brought back a princess, the daughter of one of the dead men -- a fact that Menelaus derides as impossible before he starts to work out what happened. Flashes of memory help him start to piece together the jist of what happened, and what they have learned, and he starts to realize the Monument was more dangerous than they thought.

His old friend Blackie, leader of the survivors, has a plan to deal with that, and Menelaus does not approve. And the story builds from there to higher drama. And more drama clearly lies ahead.(less)

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Mar 18, 2012 Bob rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

I am a huge fan of John C Wright, so I was really excited to read this book. The first half of the book blew my mind with the out-of-the-box ideas worked in and the breadth and audacity of the imagination put into it. I absolutely loved the first half of the book, and would wholeheartedly recommend it on that merit. To my disappointment, however, I can't give the book as a whole more than 3 stars because of two things:

1. The whole book hinges on advanced math (it's about an interplanetary missio...more

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Dec 24, 2011 Jeff Miller rated it 4 of 5 stars

Anybody who as read his books from the Golden Age trilogy to Null-A-Contiuum knows he is a writer of big ideas and this book is an embarrassment of riches. So many great ideas are contained within that they could have been parsed out a basis for a dozen of other SF books. This book follows the rich tradition of the Space Opera where it's not over until the "voluptuous green-skinned spacewomen in silvery space-bikinis" sing.

The specific story follows young Menelaus Illation Montrose from his chil...more Anybody who as read his books from the Golden Age trilogy to Null-A-Contiuum knows he is a writer of big ideas and this book is an embarrassment of riches. So many great ideas are contained within that they could have been parsed out a basis for a dozen of other SF books. This book follows the rich tradition of the Space Opera where it's not over until the "voluptuous green-skinned spacewomen in silvery space-bikinis" sing.

The specific story follows young Menelaus Illation Montrose from his childhood on. The Western world is in collapse and the world is divided up into various spheres of influence such as the Indosphere and the Hispanosphere. Menelaus is a brilliant polymath who dreams of "shining tomorrows" and the disappointments of actual life and not flying cars and other gee wiz technological developments. His dreams are partially shaped by a comic book series named Asymptote that has many shadows of Star Trek and it's view of the future of man along with the cornier aspects related to Captain Kirk. As someone whose childhood included the start of the Star Trek series and the race to the moon this young character had many elements I could relate to. His mother though has other plans for him that don't include such starry-eyed dreaming and seemingly escapist literature.

His path to adulthood leads through various phases of apprenticeship with nothing fully using his talents. He becomes a dueling-lawyer, that is a lawyer that handles things outside of court hi-tech dueling pistols. The description of one of the duels is one of the great ideas the story is so peppered with. These special guns with defenses reminds me of aviation warfare with electronic countermeasures, chaff, and other deceptive techniques along with special missiles. Having worked in this area in my Navy career this brining it down to the dueling level was especially pleasing. But this is only a small part of the plot of the book.

The main thrust of the book deals broadly with space flight, harvesting of a star, and the results of abundant cheap energy on the world as it is politically controlled. Menelaus steps into this future and into a subsequent future a century or so hence is filled with missteps that initially take him out of the action for part of the time. When he becomes able to participate he finds himself in a future where there is no war, but with a very cold war atmosphere where a group of spaceman-scientists have blackmailed the world both with cheap energy and the threat of destruction that can't be countered. Instead of Mutual Assured Destruction, there is just destruction for those who oppose this rule. This is a more dystopian than utopian future as the lack of wars does not denote actual peace and while technological developments have changed many things for the better, the tensions involving the source of energy are causing other pressures leading to conflict.

Being that John C. Wright has written about the "New Space Princess Movement" and our need for it, it is not surprising that the book indeed includes a beautiful and super intelligent Space Princess. A very enjoyable character who to me has shadows of the thankfulness of G.K. Chesterton. Maybe I am reading this into the story, but there seemed to be a light shadow of Chesterton in it. Of course any story with a Space Princess will set up a love triangle and in this case it is between Menelaus and his best friend and now dangerous foe Del Azarchel and Princess Rania. This of course creates most of the tensions in the latter half of the book leading to a showdown between the two.

But with there's more. The book also deals with post humanism and contact with an alien civilization which has left an artifact so dense with information that ultimately it can only be read by someone with post human intelligence. The big ideas surrounding this aspect are also very interesting and the consequences of this and possible contact with the aliens that left this drives the plot in multiple ways that are surely to develop since this is first book of the trilogy.

John C. Wright slings a lot of scientific BS in this novel, but it is slung well and is a higher order of scientific BS than of the Star Trek variety. So there is a bit of technobabble, but you also get the feeling it more science-based than just space opera plot filler. The philosophical discussions between the main characters is also interesting and makes the types of distinctions I like to see. Really the dialogue is quite enjoyable and often very funny at times. One description involving hackers and Moby Dick is one of the funniest things I have ever read and his pun on the spanish pronunciation of Jesus is one that will never let me hear the Spanish pronunciation of the name the same again.

One reviewer takes to task how the super-intelling post human version of Menelaus in that he "talks like a caricature of John Wayne in a low-budget Western." I can understand this criticism, but it seems to me also a bit of a bias as I can think of at least one Texan who I would consider very intelligent and extremely well read and who talks in a folksy Texan style.

The ending of this book though is more in the fashion of a cliffhanger from an old serial than is usual in space opera. Many things are left hanging and since I enjoyed the book so much my patience of waiting for the rest of the trilogy will be quite taxing. The book might not be for everybody, but it was certainly for me who loves both space opera and the old movie serials.(less)

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Apr 04, 2013 Douglas Summers.Stay rated it 3 of 5 stars

A Texan cowboy goes to a nearby antimatter star to learn from ancient alien artifacts and gain a nearly limitless source of energy. But his attempt to enhance his intelligence to interpret the artifacts goes awry, and others on the trip have their own agenda.
Wright's language and descriptions are enjoyable to read, and the story is engaging. He has the knack of showing only part of the world he's created, so that it seems to go on far beyond the scene.
There was something about this that made it...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Adam rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2013, scifi-meh

The idea behind this book was what got me reading it. The idea that there's beings controlling whole galaxies. What we think are supernovas are stars exploding due to a long distance war. That sort of stuff. Also, it was supposed to be hard-scifi with "bigger than life characters like one finds in space opera."

And that's what it was. Big characters and some hard sci-fi. Only thing is, that the characters were horrible. I hated each of them. At least there weren't that many to hate.

Yeah. I disl...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Derek Pegritz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: transhumanist-sci-fi

A VERY welcome return to transhumanist science-fiction from John C. Wright after years of writing goofy, childish fantasy. Wright suffered some form of traumatic religious brain damage after writing his seminal Golden Age Trilogy in the early 2000s, but even though he still seems to be suffering its effects in real life, his ability to write epic, Van Vogtian/Doc-Smithian sci-fi full of philosophical rumination, mythic imagery, and truly vast consequence has NOT been compromised, as Count to a T...more

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Jan 12, 2012 Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars

It is a shame that John C. Wright's own personal Science Fiction Golden Age seems to have begun and ended with his first trilogy "The Golden Age". His follow-up Everness series was a masterful blend of Dunsanian and Lovecraftian fantasy; his next series, Orphans of Choas, more an indulgence in showing off his personal knowledge of Mythology than a true wonder. I was so looking forward to his return to SF and grand Space Opera with "Count to a Trillion" but it was not to be so. Still, the ideas a...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Rusty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Count to a Trillion

Go ahead, try it, see how far you get. When I was a kid, like, maybe in Kindergarten, I remember being pretty obsessed with numbers. It was a real revelation to me that there was a pattern in how numbers worked. Count up to nine, the add a zero in a column to the right and start counting again...

Well, I’d continue with my explanation, but I’m sure most people that bother to read this probably have a good handle on how to count. So, I’ll move on.

If we get back to me being a ki...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Daniel Withrow rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'm about halfway through this book. It's got some lovely old-school SF prose going on, soaring language; some passages are like Ella Fitzgerald scatting with science terminology. Jargon-scat? It's fun stuff.

But the main character speaks a faux-Texas patois that makes Yosemite Sam look realistic by comparison. None of the characters are interesting. Everything is revealed through exposition. There are no female characters of note almost. A spaceship in the future has an entirely male crew, and c...more

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May 02, 2012 Hahleq Hahleq rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, own

Another great effort from John C. Wright. Just like his Golden Age trilogy, this isn't a book I would recommend to SciFi newbies unless I know them to be a bit of a polymath in interests if not in full expertise. This book is full of big ideas, large philosophical musings, long time spans and wondrous, galaxy spanning mysteries. If Hunger Games is your idea of sci-fi, then don't bother with this book. If you couldn't put down the Foundation trilogy by the awesome Isaac Asimov, then get this book...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Gerhard rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Okey dokey, 51% into the Kindle version and I have to admit defeat at this excruciatingly boring, overwritten and largely incomprehensible SF novel.

I liked The Golden Age and its sequels. But Wright seems to have missed the mark here: he has taken the relatively straightforward plot device of a human expedition to investigate an alien artifact, and used as this as a springboard to launch swathes of gobbledygook digression on post-human evolution.

There is virtually zero characterisation; the wri...more

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Apr 24, 2012 Tom Negrino rated it 1 of 5 stars

This one had lots of interesting ideas, but terrible characterization. The story isn't so hot either. The main character is presented as a supergenius, but speaks like a buffoon, even after he is supposed to have undergone intelligence augmentation. It just comes across as horribly, annoyingly contrived. Characters speak aloud in ways that no human being ever has or ever will. The book starts out interestingly, but then just falls off a cliff.

I love hard SF, and at first approach, this book has...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Chelsie rated it 1 of 5 stars

I did not like this book. And it had nothing to do with the plot. It was poorly written. The author kept throwing out math and science terms (i.e. the names of particular laws or principals), thing is it just felt like he was doing it to show that he knew all that stuff. HEY! I KNOW WHAT THE BERNOULLI EFFECT IS! It took away from the book. The characters are thinly written and uninteresting. He spends a lot of time describing his world in completely boring ways. Eventually I resorted to skimming...more

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Sep 04, 2012 Teresa rated it 1 of 5 stars

If you are debating spending money and time on this book, please do not. It isn't a fast read, and it's really unsatisfying. I hear John C. Wright has some other really great offerings out there, so go find one of those.

The takeaway I got from this is that girls rule and boys drool? Really, it's that mature, for all of the time spent on exposition set up and cool ideas. The action (of which there was very little) resolved in a frustrating, unbelievable anti-climax. An enormous amount of time is...more If you are debating spending money and time on this book, please do not. It isn't a fast read, and it's really unsatisfying. I hear John C. Wright has some other really great offerings out there, so go find one of those.

The takeaway I got from this is that girls rule and boys drool? Really, it's that mature, for all of the time spent on exposition set up and cool ideas. The action (of which there was very little) resolved in a frustrating, unbelievable anti-climax. An enormous amount of time is spent on telling readers what they missed. Everything interesting that happens, happens off screen. The few times I let my guard down and was drawn in to the current situation, the plot skipped ahead a few years or a century. Settings and details should be a backdrop for the actual story, not the only thing interesting in the whole book. So many really engrossing ideas were just wasted here.

Oh, and don't let other reviews fool you. The math isn't intimidating, nor is it genius enough to read the story just for the "hard" part of the sci-fi. It's overwhelming, because we can't just get past talking about parabolas and wind currents and patterns and blahblah. It reads as if we're supposed to be awed by the writer's intellect, but I really wasn't.

The main character is a Texan from the far future, and he is ludicrous. His diction is a heavy-handed dialect that makes him into a buffoon. I don't usually even blink at hearing (or using) words like "skedaddle" and "yonder" but this was so over the top that I cringed whenever Montrose spoke or thought. Since he's the protagonist, most of the book was painful to read. As a contrast, his mother's word choice and rhythm was completely alien sounding but somehow worked, so it's not like Wright was unable to make the odd dialect work. He just forces it so hard on Montrose that it's not plausible.

And while I'm on the main character, how am I supposed to believe that a man who is subtle and observant enough to read pupil dilation and slight muscle contraction as language, can actually allow whole paragraphs told to him to just completely slide past his notice? If it were that he was a monomaniac, that might be believable, but often these big fat clues where someone flat out tells him what is going on about the VERY THING he is fixated on are ignored or escape his notice and he remembers them or they make sense to him chapters later. He can sweep his eyes over a terrain and deduce the types of energy being used, the governmental systems, the energy output, even the societal situation, but he doesn't see the trap that is clearly marked with danger cones and police tape and everything? Idiot savant or not, it's not consistent; Montrose makes absolutely no sense.

There was so much imagination squandered here. It's really frustrating, because the prologue was the high note. It gets worse with every page. I thought I was at the peak of stupidity at several points, but Montrose (and the entire world) always managed to top themselves with inconsistency and idiocy all the way up to the very end. I will not read the sequel, because I feel like the entire book was a bait and switch.(less)

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Jan 02, 2012 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

If I had to find a flaw with this novel, it would be having to wade through the math-speak that saturates a giant chunk of the book. However, I am a veteran scifi reader, and I am far gone enough to actually carry about warp field dynamics, be irritated by the structure of Firefly's universe, and be able to multiple types models of Valkyrie variable fighters apart at a glance. I will not complain, but just warn you: You might need to have google handy.

This is a book for scifi readers, not for pe...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Text Addict rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: abandoned, science-fiction

The problem of an unlikable protagonist: after having the book out from the library for over 6 weeks, I can't be bothered to finish it before I have to return it (like, two days ago) because somebody put a hold on it. Of course it's also a problem of the post-Collapse neo-patriarchal setting, too.

Wright made a good effort to give Montrose a sympathetic aspect - the young boy's romantic attachment to an old space-opera comic full of optimism is a great touch, and according to the jacket copy he...more

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Dec 26, 2011 Joseph rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this more than I actually did. I don't read a lot of SF these days, but one thing I particularly like is big idea/large scale SF -- give me something that involves artificial stars, colliding galaxies, vast and ancient intelligences. And this book has those in spades. (Well, to an extent -- I think it's laying a lot of groundwork for future installments.) But it also had things that kind of rubbed me the wrong way, primarily the protagonist (a postapocalyptic Texan), who often s...more

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Feb 11, 2013 kvon rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

Two and a half stars. It looks like this is book 1 of 5. The story of a genius who pursues transhumanism in a future dystopia. Wright often does a good job of showing rather than telling us about genius, but some of it gets over the top (eg analyzing fourier transforms of light off a surface). The female characters are plotwise and characterwise weak, with a Harsh Mother and a Beautiful Princess (the latter is also smart). But no Crone? No, all the old folks are men, a monastery of scientists se...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Jeff rated it 2 of 5 stars

I felt this was a book full of wasted opportunities. There were enough really interesting concepts to fill multiple books but the climax ended with a duel over a woman. Such a let down after all of the interesting build up concerning enhanced humans, extra-terrestrial intelligence, interstellar space travel etc. It is full of interesting and thought provoking concepts that just never pay off. What is frustrating is that this book is clearly a "Part 1" of a longer story. I enjoy epic storytelling...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Mark Edlund rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like hard science fiction but this book was diamond hard. I felt that I needed an advanced math degree to understand Wright's ideas. But the ones I did understand were incredible and interesting.
Set in the 2300's Spain and China are the super powers. A ship has been sent to harvest antimatter from a distant star for an unlimited energy source. However, the star is guarded by an alien artifact covered in math symbols. An augmented crewmember tries to translate the equations, and, on his return...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Sunshine Tentacles rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is *thick* with data and jargon from the various involved subject matters (mathematics, programming, semantics, biology), but even so I found it extremely enjoyable. There's a little bit of a cliffhanger at the end, but I didn't find it infuriating (which cliffhangers normally do). I found the main character fascinating and likeable and the future he eventually ends up in creatively different from most of the sci-fi I read. I think, if you liked Asimov's foundation series, you'll be ab...more

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Apocalyptic > Post Apocalyptic

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About John C. Wright

John C. Wright (John Charles Justin Wright, born 1961) is an American author of science fiction and fantasy novels. A Nebula award finalist (for the fantasy novel Orphans of Chaos), he was called "this fledgling century's most important new SF talent" by Publishers Weekly (after publication of his debut novel, The Golden Age).

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Books by John C. Wright

Orphans of Chaos (Chronicles of Chaos, #1)

Fugitives of Chaos (Chronicles of Chaos, #2)

Titans of Chaos (Chronicles of Chaos, #3)

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Count to a Trillion (Count to the Eschaton Sequence #1)

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