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<![CDATA[Light]]>
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In M. John Harrison’s dangerously illuminating new novel, three quantum outlaws face a universe of their own creation, a universe where you make up the rules as you go along and break them just as fast, where there’s only one thing more mysterious than darkness.<br><br>In contemporary London, Michael Kearney is a serial killer on the run from the entity that drives him to kill. He is seeking escape in a future that doesn’t yet exist—a quantum world that he and his physicist partner hope to access through a breach of time and space itself. In this future, Seria Mau Genlicher has already sacrificed her body to merge into the systems of her starship, the White Cat. But the “inhuman” K-ship captain has gone rogue, pirating the galaxy while playing cat and mouse with the authorities who made her what she is. In this future, Ed Chianese, a drifter and adventurer, has ridden dynaflow ships, run old alien mazes, surfed stellar envelopes. He “went deep”—and lived to tell about it. Once crazy for life, he’s now just a twink on New Venusport, addicted to the bizarre alternate realities found in the tanks—and in debt to all the wrong people.<br><br>Haunting them all through this maze of menace and mystery is the shadowy presence of the Shrander—and three enigmatic clues left on the barren surface of an asteroid under an ocean of light known as the Kefahuchi Tract: a deserted spaceship, a pair of bone dice, and a human skeleton.
295250
book
2002
Light
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406
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Sun Jul 06 10:57:37 -0700 2008
Sun Jul 06 10:57:37 -0700 2008
Far future cyberpunk just doesn't work.
First of all, the voice of the book is off: some deep future hep cat telli...more...]]>
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Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007
Wed Oct 24 15:56:54 -0700 2007
Tue Nov 06 10:21:49 -0800 2007
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Thu Sep 18 14:20:44 -0700 2008
Thu Sep 18 14:30:39 -0700 2008
There are things about <book: Light> that frustrated me deeply. For most of the book, the point and the plot were discouragingly unclear. It was difficult to tell what anything had...more...]]>
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Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008
Sat Mar 15 09:33:26 -0700 2008
Thu Apr 03 08:03:24 -0700 2008
A-plus for worldbuilding, here. Far-future worlds are tough; half of them are i...more...]]>
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1
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Sat Dec 29 14:06:44 -0800 2007
Sat Dec 29 14:17:35 -0800 2007
I call it hard because there is a certain amount of focus on the tech and science, but it doesn't make the sort of d...more...]]>
3
1
false
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Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007
Mon Oct 01 20:17:42 -0700 2007
Mon Oct 15 01:55:40 -0700 2007
I'm still not entirely sure what happened in this book, as it's short on explanation. It's one of those sci-fi books that drops science terms like there's no tomorrow; they come so fast and furious that you hardly know which ones are real and which ones are entir...more...]]>
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1
false
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Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007
Thu Jun 21 22:58:36 -0700 2007
Thu Jun 21 22:58:41 -0700 2007
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Sun Jan 04 00:00:00 -0800 2009
Mon Jan 05 20:37:27 -0800 2009
Mon Jan 05 21:05:21 -0800 2009
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Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009
Fri Sep 11 10:18:44 -0700 2009
Fri Sep 11 10:44:53 -0700 2009
Light. In the end, it negotiates an uneasy truce between poetry, concept fiction, and narrative storytelling, doing so at the expense of all aspects. Light isn't quite a novel, and author M. John Harrison seems perfec...more...]]>
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0
false
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Wed Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006
Mon Nov 02 11:55:48 -0800 2009
Fri Nov 06 14:21:18 -0800 2009
Light: Harrison is a better writer than Banks (at least the version with "M." added to the authorial name),...more...]]>
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1
false
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Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007
Thu Nov 08 09:44:26 -0800 2007
Mon Nov 12 15:42:34 -0800 2007
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4
0
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Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009
Fri Aug 28 14:39:19 -0700 2009
Wed Sep 02 15:20:29 -0700 2009
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0
0
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Thu Feb 05 09:27:41 -0800 2009
Thu Feb 05 09:27:41 -0800 2009
Reviewers call Light "complex," yet seemed more than willing to forgive the complexity—as well as the shortage of sympathetic major characters—because of the award-winning author's style and sheer intelligence. They also lauded the ending, deemed "suitably transformational" a...more...]]>
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Sun Jul 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009
Thu Jul 02 06:45:20 -0700 2009
Mon Jul 13 10:54:31 -0700 2009
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4
1
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Mon Jan 05 00:00:00 -0800 2009
Thu Dec 11 17:56:17 -0800 2008
Tue Jan 06 13:55:46 -0800 2009
The th...more...]]>
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Thu Jul 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009
Wed Jun 10 07:40:38 -0700 2009
Fri Jul 10 07:59:10 -0700 2009
If I am scratching my head when you see me next, it's because I am still trying to digest Light, a rather amazing work of literature disguised as a genre piece that will probably get a fifth star upon re-read. Light is just that good.
Problem is, it took me until I...more...]]>
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Fri Dec 19 12:07:43 -0800 2008
Fri Dec 19 12:34:39 -0800 2008
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false
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Fri Nov 06 00:00:00 -0800 2009
Wed Oct 14 18:16:37 -0700 2009
Fri Nov 06 17:53:09 -0800 2009
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0
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Sat Mar 21 19:15:09 -0700 2009
Wed Dec 10 09:00:27 -0800 2008
Sat Mar 21 19:15:09 -0700 2009
Light is my least favorite kind of book: one I regret having taken the time to finish. I usually follow a 100-page rule but, in this case, the reviews were...more...]]>
1
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Mon Oct 27 00:00:00 -0700 2008
Fri Oct 10 18:36:47 -0700 2008
Wed Feb 04 17:47:46 -0800 2009
Like "Neuromancer" this novel is poorly written on almost every level: cluttered, dysfunct...more...]]>