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The Night Sessions

3.54 of 5 stars 3.54 · rating details · 289 ratings · 47 reviews

A bishop is dead. As Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson picks through the rubble of the tiny church, he discovers that it was deliberately bombed. That it's a terrorist act is soon beyond doubt. It's been a long time since anyone saw anything like this. Terrorism is history.

After the Middle East wars and the rising sea levels - after Armageddon and the Flood - came the Gre...more

Hardcover, 324 pages

Published August 7th 2008 by Orbit (first published 2008)

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Jan 13, 2013 Ctgt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

I saw a description on this book as sci/fi police procedural, which is pretty accurate. Although I thought it had more depth than just a straight up whodunnit.

The story is set in a future world that has been forged by a great war. I know, you've seen this before, but wait, there's more! It's not your typical nuclear destruction, although tactical nukes were used, but the world was not destroyed. You see, these wars were called The Middle East Wars or Faith Wars. These wars were followed by The S...more

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Dec 23, 2009 Nicholas Whyte added it · review of another edition

"http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1280532.html[return][return]An excellent merging of numerous MacLeod themes, shaken and stirred to produce a thought-provoking result. The book is set in a relatively near-future independent Scotland, after the victory of secularism against religion throughout the English-speaking world, but is nothing like as polemical as that summary might make it sound; it is told from the point of view of the policeman investigating the murder of a Catholic priest, a crime whic...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Originally published on my blog here in November 2009.

Investigation of crimes which may turn out to be terrorism has become something of a staple for TV crime shows nowadays, particularly American ones. It's partly because of the public concern over attacks, partly because it will involve higher stakes than a simple murder, and partly because it enables the writers to make some political comment (usually critical of the high-handedness of the Homeland Security forces, in the American case). For...more Originally published on my blog here in November 2009.

Investigation of crimes which may turn out to be terrorism has become something of a staple for TV crime shows nowadays, particularly American ones. It's partly because of the public concern over attacks, partly because it will involve higher stakes than a simple murder, and partly because it enables the writers to make some political comment (usually critical of the high-handedness of the Homeland Security forces, in the American case). For similar reasons, it has long been popular in books, with the James Bond series providing several examples, and others I can think of going back much further - thirties Saint stories, and even Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent from 1907.

Ken MacLeod, however, is able to ring the changes on this hackneyed plot through an interesting science fiction background. The motivations for fictional terrorist attacks prior to 9/11 were political, or connected to organised crime. Reflecting public concerns, religious justifications for attacks are now overwhelmingly common in thrillers. The monetary motive is still common (even though it always makes me at least think of camp supervillains and comic book heroes). MacLeod sets The Night Sessions in a not too distant future, where a worldwide secular revolution has purged religious movements of any involvement in politics, leaving (in a generation) the practice of religious belief a private, almost shameful, activity. So it is a great shock to the Edinburgh police when a Catholic priest is murdered in an indiscriminately violent bomb attack, and the feeling that this is a crime which should be extinct is expertly conveyed by the author. It even takes them some time to discover that the victim is a priest, as religious titles are not used in public any more.

There is perhaps a certain implausibility in the idea that religion could cease to matter in politics in the near future, even if there is a huge tank battle at Megiddo (the place which gave us the word "armageddon") where the use of tactical nuclear weapons renders, as MacLeod puts it, the question of who should live in Israel/Palestine moot for decades. After all, religion and politics have been entwined since the earliest written history, of Mesopotamia and Egypt; the first recorded rulers were priests or considered divine. Religion and arguing about religion seem to be a necessary part of human nature, like it or not. The religious theme is well thought out, including a critique of the idea that every word of the Bible is literally true that I had never seen before.

There is a similar implausibility in some of the politics in MacLeod's previous novels, particularly the anarchist states in the Fall Revolution books. But they are well thought through, so as backgrounds to novels they are excellent, giving an interest beyond the more mundane background of those science fiction novels where the setting is just today's world with some futuristic technology. This is less common than it was in the past, when there were quite a lot of stories in the genre which were really just about the tech.

Generally, I read two or three books at once, swapping every couple of chapters or so. The books I was reading alongside this - Mary Stewart's The Gabriel Hounds and Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space are both ones I had read at least twice before, but even so The Night Sessions grabbed my attention unusually strongly: I kept on reading rather than changing to one of the other books. Even with novelty playing a part, this doesn't usually happen. I would rank this novel as one of Ken MacLeod's best, alongside the Fall Revolution series.(less)

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May 14, 2012 Alisa Hedden rated it 4 of 5 stars

Occurring in a near future, taking the idea that the events of 9/11 were the opening salvos of a world-wide war divided by lines of faith, this paints a pretty bleak picture where the people that still have a religion are driven to extremes in their needs to justify their faith. Basically starts off with the idea of “If this goes on, where will it lead?” All someone has to do is take a look at the news to see how politics is decided more along the lines of greed or faith rather than logic and th...more

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Feb 24, 2012 Neal Asher rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think the last Ken Macleod book I read was either Star Fraction or The Cassini Division and Night Sessions definitely won’t be my last. It only took a few pages before I felt something loosening up in my chest because the pages were speeding past and I knew I was in safe hands. This was a thoroughly engaging tale, despite the ‘oops’ moments.

Though this book is great science fiction, it is also a demonstration of how there ain’t nothing that dates so quickly as science fiction. Here we have, as...more

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Oct 28, 2011 Ivo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf, whodunnit

This is a quite enjoyable detective novel. With robots. Here is the setting: the Faith Wars that had started with 9/11 have ended in a partial nuclear Holocaust, and the world has now turned its back on religion. For a still traumatized humanity, it's a time of environmental and societal mending as well as renewed progress and space exploration, where robots - who had accidentally awakened to consciousness on the battlefield - uneasily mingle with people. When a bomb attack kills a priest in Sco...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Allie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed reading The Night Sessions, but I was left wanting more. I wanted to know more about the world MacLeod had begun to reveal and about the characters that I felt I only barely knew. I liked how MacLeod showed the many different kinds of people—and robots!—who are drawn to religious faith, but I wish there could have been more of an exploration of what ideas lead robots or people toward faith in the first place. The central mystery was interesting enough, but I would have loved to see mor...more

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Dec 03, 2012 Craig Buno rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: robots, sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 15, 2012 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: random-comments-review

...The Night Sessions is packed with interesting concepts but it also a very efficiently written book. MacLeod packs more into the 260 odd pages of this novel that some books double that size carry. One of the few negative aspects of the novel, is that some of it is glossed over very quickly. Stuff that would have deserved a closer look. That didn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying this book however. From what I read online, The Night Sessions is not generally regarded as MacLeod's strongest boo...more

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Apr 05, 2012 Simon Chamberlain added it

This is the other 'science-fiction/detective story set in future Edinburgh' that I've read this year. MacLeod is one of the most intelligent sf writers out there - just reading his work you'll get an introduction to politics, technology, etc. This one's set in the 2020s, following a major war between the west and Islam, leading to a general loss of faith and second Enlightenment. Christians are officially ignored by the government. But then a priest is murdered...linked into the story is an Amer...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Tamara added it

Shelves: scotland, europe, new-zealand, i-robot, religeon, crime, christianity, edinbourgh, britain, near-future, sf, author-male, male-protagonist

I have this certainty that somewhere out there, perhaps as yet unwritten, but somewhere, is a really incredible Science Fiction novel by Ken MacLeod. Alas, this one still isn't it. It's fun, it's quick, it's readable, it's got some neat ideas and some decent writing, and it helpfully tones down Macleod's tendency to undercut his narratives with rather bad jokes. But it's not the one.

I may need an independent Scotland tag at this rate. Between MacLeod and Stross I don't think i've read quite as...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: e-books, sf

Shifting political tides are frequent and cyclical enough that they've earned their own label -- pendulum politics. One party and its policies are in. The pendulum swings and another party and its policies dominate. Rarely, though, does the pendulum swing as much as the scenario in which Ken MacLeod plots Night Sessions, the winner of the 2008 British Science Fiction Association award for best novel.

Night Sessions is set in a near future in the aftermath of what Britain and its allies call the "...more Shifting political tides are frequent and cyclical enough that they've earned their own label -- pendulum politics. One party and its policies are in. The pendulum swings and another party and its policies dominate. Rarely, though, does the pendulum swing as much as the scenario in which Ken MacLeod plots Night Sessions, the winner of the 2008 British Science Fiction Association award for best novel.

Night Sessions is set in a near future in the aftermath of what Britain and its allies call the "the Faith Wars" and others call "the Oil Wars." 9/11 was the first in a series of events that eventually brought all-out war between Muslim and Christian nations, a war in which soldiers were aided by sentient robots and the sides engaged in tactical nuclear exchanges on the plains of Megiddo, solving the Israeli-Palestine conflict by making that part of the Middle East uninhabitable. Los Angeles is little more than a "black plain," the victim of a 10-kiloton nuclear warhead, in the course of an internal war with fundamentalist Christians.

The savagery and effects of the Faith Wars prompted a secular backlash called the Second Enlightenment (or the Great Rejection in religious camps). Even using persecution and harassment when deemed necessary, the Second Enlightenment ultimately attained its goal of separating Church from State and removing religion entirely from politics and public life. The U.K. and other parts of Europe are secular to the point that society no longer recognizes religion, despite the fact there remain millions of believers. The official policy is one of "non-cognisance." The United States has even adopted a constitutional amendment expressly stating the nation was not founded on Christian, or any other, religion. Some American Christian fundamentalists have taken refuge in New Zealand, where, among other things, there is a "science park" in a national park portraying a creationist view of the world, often using sentient robots to portray man living with dinosaurs.

Within this setting, the main plot line leans toward police procedural set in Edinburgh in MacLeod's native Scotland. Detective Adam Ferguson helps head up the investigation of the death of a Catholic parish priest who opens a package containing a bomb. Through his investigation, Ferguson, aided by "Skulk," a leki (law enforcement kinetic intelligence -- a type of sentient robot) assistant, attempts to ascertain if the deaths are a form of terrorism by either atheist or religious extremists, particularly as more clerics are murdered.

Ferguson's work with Skulk can't help but bring to mind Isaac Asimov's robot stories, in which a human detective partnered with a humanoid robot, R. Daneel Olivaw. Night Sessions has a far more dystopian edge than any of Asimov's robot stories. MacLeod also joins British author Charles Stross in using a police procedural set in Edinburgh as a vehicle through which to explore near future scenarios. Other parts of the book invoke scenes one might expect to find in space opera, a genre MacLeod has previously explored.

Surprisingly, this is the first U.S. release of Night Sessions, even though The Restoration Game , published later, was released in the U.S. last year. Night Sessions deals with more overt hot button political issues than The Restoration Game. This book's setting and what Ferguson ultimately uncovers raise interesting questions about religion, as well as fundamentalism at any point on the religious spectrum. As usual with MacLeod, the work is well-plotted and tends to build logically. Sometimes, though, plot seems to take precedence over character. Some characters seem to appear as little more than plot mechanisms. Likewise, a key but infrequently appearing character seems to relinquish his core beliefs much too quickly and does so on an issue the reader would have expected the character to have confronted long before.

These flaws aside, this is another MacLeod work that causes the reader to ponder not only key political and social issues but matters we may face in the future, such as the relationship between humanity and sentient technology. As such, it will attract those who view science fiction as more than simple genre fiction.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)(less)

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Mar 11, 2013 Joell Smith-Borne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-f

I liked the near future world of this book, and the exploration of what a society in the middle of a big backlash against religion would look like. The physical layout of the book bugged me--the scenes would change abruptly and completely with no visual indicator, so I had many "wait, what?" moments. The ending was also kind of unsatisfying--the more I think about it, the less I understand how the A-B of the book leads to the C of the conclusion. In fact the conclusion is sort of like a 4--not o...more

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May 06, 2012 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars

A thoughtful and thoughtprovoking hard science fiction Scottish police procedural The night sessions is gritty complex and dark in tone. The setting grows out of the flaws problems and stresses of today's polarised society and may offend readers of certain stripes. It's short at 260 something pages and tells one story through the eyes of little over a half dozen viewpoints. If you like good police thrillers and enjoy a bit of philosophical challenge along the way check it out. It's the first of...more

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Apr 29, 2011 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I really liked the central speculative elements of the story, both technological and societal (no matter how unlikely).

Both the narration and the central character, DI Adam Ferguson, seemed emotionally distant and uninvolved; which may be a deliberate result of the use of the “police procedural” format.

Several plot points turn on minutiae of Christian doctrine and scriptural interpretation, which while explained in the story, didn’t ever make much intuitive sense to me (Mirroring, I guess, how...more

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Apr 02, 2013 James rated it 3 of 5 stars

Oh, Mr. Macleod. This is a detective novel, and the detective part is perfectly fine. But it’s set in a world in which all religions have been ruthlessly, violently, and for the most part successfully repressed. Which is both the core of the novel and somehow not sufficiently appalling as rendered. I also question whether any of the plot points that rely on theological questions from Scottish history (and there are a ton of these) make any damn sense at all to someone unfamiliar with that histor...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Jason Pettus rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, dark, subversive

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

I was a big fan of Ken MacLeod's last book with Pyr, the fascinatingly unique day-after-tomorrow political thriller about central Asia, ancient mythology, and MMOs used for revolutionary purposes, The Restoration Game; but this newest is a big step down from that one, a book that that similarly aims concep...more (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

I was a big fan of Ken MacLeod's last book with Pyr, the fascinatingly unique day-after-tomorrow political thriller about central Asia, ancient mythology, and MMOs used for revolutionary purposes, The Restoration Game; but this newest is a big step down from that one, a book that that similarly aims conceptually high but unfortunately falls flat most of the time. In fact, it takes a big suspension of disbelief even to swallow the premise and get past page one -- that after losing a "holy war" with Muslim countries over dwindling oil supplies in the near future, spurred by conservative Western politicians using fundamentalist Christian propaganda to sell it all to the public, the US and Western Europe are taken over by radical-left socialists who literally ban all public mention of religion ever again; and that although those radical days are over and a more stable government has started normalizing society again, there is still a deep cultural precedence for Christian worship being a semi-secret underground activity that in Orwellian style is not even officially recognized by the government as existing, even going so far as to insist on addressing church officials as "doctor" instead of "reverend" or "bishop." That's a pretty big freaking pill to swallow, which you have to do for the rest of the book to make sense, essentially a sneaky detective thriller set within this alt-history, concerning murders within this shadowy underground Catholic community and who might be committing them for what purposes. Interesting in its way, I myself found it just not as well-written as his previous novel, and full of the kinds of ultra-hacky genre-novelist stuff that makes me want to sometimes claw my own eyes out with so many of these midlist SF titles (such as the whole subplot taking place among the packed but silent danceclubs that have seemingly been made out of every old cathedral and mosque in existence, where "VJs" [virtual DJs, get it?] pump the music directly into people's heads and throw around enhanced-reality special effects across the room with their hands "Minority Report" style, while everyone watches along with their virtual-reality "iThink" glasses, UGH, UGH, enough, MacLeod, enough). Only for the extra-committed genre fan, although all of you should like this well enough.

Out of 10: 8.2(less)

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Oct 14, 2012 David Manns rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-fiction, science-fiction

Picture a world where Religion of all sorts has been sidelined, rejected, and the world is full of secular republics. A world where ex-military intelligent robots work side by side with the police. Where Palestine is a radioactive ruin after the battles of the Faith Wars between the Mulsim East and the Judeo/Christian West. Where there are two space elevators and vast soletas that stop the world from warming up under the greenhouse effect.

This is the world of The Night Sessions, where someone is...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Alec rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

This ‘ere is my second Ken Macleod book, the first being the rather snazzy The Sky Road, which left me distinctly interested in checking out some more. While still being full of admiration, I didn't like The Night Sessions quite so much: it's an odd beast, doing some things very well indeed, and others a little blandly.

What we have is basically a police procedural: bad sort gets up to no good, hero and associates try to track him down while filling in paperwork and faffing about with forensics....more This ‘ere is my second Ken Macleod book, the first being the rather snazzy The Sky Road, which left me distinctly interested in checking out some more. While still being full of admiration, I didn't like The Night Sessions quite so much: it's an odd beast, doing some things very well indeed, and others a little blandly.

What we have is basically a police procedural: bad sort gets up to no good, hero and associates try to track him down while filling in paperwork and faffing about with forensics. Only this one’s set in the future, of the near-and-convincingly-possible variety, and that changes everything.

The background is that in an undefined year not very far away, religious tensions around the world boil over, and everything really goes to pot. A massive series of open conflicts breaks out, eventually leading to a violent official rejection of religion in a number of countries, the ones that matter to the book being Scotland and the US. These are the Faith Wars, or the Oil Wars, depending on who you ask, and they left everyone with a bitter taste in their mouth: religions were, for a while, driven underground or overseas (there are fundamental communities in New Zealand). In Scotland, by the time of the novel’s events, faith is tolerated under an official policy of non-cognisance.

Writing it here, this sounds like a fairly extreme, unlikely dystopian setting, but it’s presented extremely successfully: it doesn’t feel at all impossible, and the unofficial toleration in particular feels realistic – this isn’t some mad, impossibly invasive fascist state, but the kind of world we already live in, only with the tables turned a little. It’s a potentially touchy subject, but for most of the book it’s treated fairly. The religious and non-religious are both given plenty of sympathy, motivation and characterisation, and both ‘sides’ are pleasingly flawed and have their own unease about the modern world. There're also some ace ideas about where culture and subcultures could go in this kind of environment, my favourite being the neo-Gnostics, grumpy goth-like students who believe the world is a simulation. In other words, they're a reaction against the prevailing scientific rationalist mindset, in the same way that some of goth culture is a reaction against the prevailing Christian mindset of today.

This neatly constructed world is supported by generally excellent characterisation. This is done primarily through dialogue – there’s a fine range of subtle voices here, with most major and plenty of minor characters identifiable by their ways of speaking as much as by description. This definitely helped to make people feel alive, rather than just being pawns to support the author’s plot revelations. I'd have liked to see more of some of the minor figures, actually.

The strong treatment of religion and character are both let down in the same two places. One is a bad egg, the crux of the plot, who gets almost no page time and barely any explanation or justification of action. Bit odd, considering how well everyone else is done. The second exception is a semi-major character who undergoes a sudden conversion at the end of the book. He’s given specific, well-drawn and convincingly detailed beliefs early on, and these are maintained throughout, until suddenly, after being pointed at a few mild Biblical oddities, he changes his entire system of belief. It’s not the change that distresses me, because the events of the novel certainly justify this. No, instead it’s the odd focus on a tiny spot of mild Biblical scholarship that is presented as life-changing, when it clearly isn’t. Anyone with this character's beliefs would already have had to deal with much stronger difficulties in their philosophical explorations, and these three little verses seemed like a surprising drop in the otherwise splendid characterisation.

Faith aside, the setting is a detailed but low-concept future, in which everything is more or less recognisable but a bit fancier. It’s science fiction from the news, rather than from the laboratory. There are elaborate forms of social media, for instance, along with nifty search engines called things like Ogle Face and Ogle Earth (see what they did there?). There are space elevators, and big discs that float around the earth, creating artificial eclipses to reduce global warming. There are high-rise farms, robots that assist the police and military, and people can wear glasses or contact lenses with what amounts to a tarted up version of internet access. None of this is described in intricate detail – this isn’t tech-porn. Everything is mentioned as if it’s a normal part of the background, rather than being something marvellous designed to make readers gawp in wonder.

The police work, in particular, is done brilliantly. Everything feels like a sensible extension of the kind of police procedures we see in books set today. They might have an AI joining the dots in the background, but they still do the paperwork and still draw things on a whiteboard, because, like reality, people don't quite trust the machines to do everything. It’s only later in the book that the futuristic parts really start to kick in, and by then you’re used to them.

The high quality of the police procedural element is also, sadly, where I start to have qualms. You see, on the whole I’m not a huge fan of police procedurals. I can get awfully excited about detectives, particularly Father Brown and Philip Marlowe (and do Thursday Next and Sam Vimes count?), but while I’ve been known to tear through some Rebus now and then, I often find the genre too constrained, almost like the western of the modern world – there’s only so much that can be done with it. However many variations of villainy authors come up with, I find that the structures become similar, with the same amount of plot convolution, the same false leads, the same links to hints dropped earlier in the story, the same mildly troubled protagonist, the same guilt and satisfaction, the same points in the narrative punctuated by crimes and explanations.

That, sadly, is also the case here. It’s such a good combination of police procedural and science fiction that it fails to break out of either. Only that sounds bad, and it’s certainly not a bad book. In fact, it's very good - I tore through it in a couple of days, wanting to know what happened next, and wanting to know how the pieces fitted together. The writing is mostly great, and the concept is treated intelligently, showing the flaws of all kinds of extremism, and there is plenty that is unexpected, both in plot and setting. Certainly recommendable, but it's clever and neat rather than magnificent and ingenious.(less)

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Feb 23, 2011 Greg Fewer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, award-winners

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In certain respects, this is a conventional detective story in which somebody is murdered and the police identify and investigate the suspects, search for forensic and other clues, and hunt for the killer. But of course, as a science-fiction novel, there is an emphasis on technology, some of which is familiar and contemporary and some of it futuristic and unfamiliar, yet plausible. In a near-future Scotland where religion is not officially recognised but where nobody can be persecuted for their...more

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Oct 20, 2010 Kay rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: science fiction geeks, futurologists and armchair philosophers.

Shelves: mystery-thriller, sci-fi-n-fantasy

I didn't like the beginning- seemed rather boring when people were trying to converse on a plane flight! Now I'm into it I'm loving the philosophical dilemmas concerning humans, humanoid robots and robots that can be switched to self-aware or with the potential for self-destruction! The detective (Ferguson) is always just on the edge of getting ahead and then something happens to upset things. The religious element McLeod gives to future conflict is just the sort of thing that might happen in re...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Paul Pensom rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-unowned

This is a novel of the near future; a time when the Abrahamic religions have clashed once more, resulting in a turning away from them known colloquially as 'The Great Rejection'. In the West, religions are tolerated in the private sphere, but not recognised by government, a policy known as 'official non-cognizance'.

Into this heady brew are stirred the additional ingredients of fully sentient artificial intelligence, in the form of 'Blade Runner' style androids, space elevators and intense globa...more

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Aug 31, 2008 Doug rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

This is probably Ken Macleod's best book to date.

In previous novels, Macleod has tackled Trotskyism ( The Star Fraction), he has created a society that implements Nozick's brand of Libertarianism outright ( The Stone Canal), and he has explored the war on terror ( The Execution Channel).

In this book he moves his sights to religion. The attacks of September 11th 2001 become the opening salvo in the Faith Wars, wars that the west did not win. The backlash against religion is severe, with the polic...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Louise Staley rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book struck me as an attempt by a non-practising Christian or an agnostic to explore the differences between fundamentalism and mainstream religion. I'm not sure it is entirely successful. But it does include some interesting ideas. Funnily enough, one of the characters is a DJ for silent dance parties, where everyone wears headphones to hear the music and just on Sunday I read an article in one of the papers that such events actually exist. I wonder which came first.

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Jun 01, 2012 David Marshall rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a deeply frustrating book. With a different approach, it could have been wonderful. As it is, Macleod falls to translate some very interesting ideas about religious beliefs and artificial intelligence into a coherent narrative. It ends up merely good.

http://opionator.wordpress.com/2012/0...

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Mar 24, 2011 Jaine Fenn added it

Ken McLeod is an author I need to read more of. This well-written and multi-layered book is simultaneously and easy and a challenging read. My only minor quibble is the low-key ending, because I had enjoyed the book so much I hoped for something with a bit more sparkle ... but that might just be me.

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Oct 07, 2012 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: faith, fiction, science-fiction

A mystery-thriller plot frames MacLeod's fascinating examination of religious and other forms off fanaticism and extremism, set in a familiar world of high-tech, political realignments and artificial intelligences. Quite a fascinating novel with more than a hint of redemption at its conclusion.

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Aug 05, 2012 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Police procedural SF explores in depth many philosophical and theological topics including: one possible genesis of strong AI, the nature of the individual, an extrapolation of current trends in social media, using space elevators to control climate change, and more. Recommended.

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Oct 10, 2009 Jim McGowan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Macleods second 'near-future' novel, did not have quite the same impact as The Execution Channel, but is still a very good read. Combining sci fi and crime genres, the book follows an Edinburgh detective investigating the murder of a priest in an age where all religion is outlawed.

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Nov 28, 2012 Timothy Neesam rated it 3 of 5 stars

There's an interesting mix of religion and robotics here, fundamentalism and artificial intelligence, mixed with police procedural. MacLeod does a good job mixing the two together with some interesting devices (iThink) and some oddities (gender-bending police and a werewolf). It's intriguing and almost hits the mark.

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About Ken MacLeod

Ken MacLeod is an award-winning Scottish science fiction writer.

His novels have won the Prometheus Award and the BSFA award, and been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives near Edinburgh, Scotland.

MacLeod graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology and has worked as a computer programmer and written a masters thesis on biomechanics.

His novels often explore socialist, c...more

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Books by Ken MacLeod

The Star Fraction (The Fall Revolution, #1)

The Cassini Division (The Fall Revolution, #3)

Learning the World: A Scientific Romance

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