In the Mouth of the Whale

The Quiet War #3

by Paul McAuley

Fomalhaut was first colonised by the posthuman Quick, who established an archipelago of thistledown cities and edenic worldlets within the star's vast dust belt. Their peaceful, decadent civilisation was swiftly conquered by a band of ruthless, aggressive, unreconstructed humans who call themselves the True, then, a century before, the True beat back an advance party of Ghosts, a posthuman cult which colonised the nearby system of Beta Hydri after being driven from the Solar System a thousand years ago. Now the Ghosts have returned to Fomalhaut, to begin their end game: the conquest of its single gas giant planet, a captured interstellar wanderer far older than the rest of Fomalhaut's system. At its core is a sphere of hot metallic hydrogen with strange and powerful properties based on exotic quantum physics. The Quick believe it is inhabited by an ancient alien Mind; the True believe it can be developed into a weapon, and the Ghosts believe it can be transformed into a computational system so powerful it can reach into their past, collapse timelines, and fulfil the ancient prophecies of their founder.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Ebooks, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 19, 2012

About the author

Since about 2000, book jackets have given his name as just Paul McAuley.

A biologist by training, UK science fiction author McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction, dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternate history/alternate reality, and space travel.

McAuley has also used biotechnology and nanotechnology themes in near-future settings.

Since 2001, he has produced several SF-based techno-thrillers such as The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, and White Devils.

Four Hundred Billion Stars, his first novel, won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988. Fairyland won the 1996 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 1997 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best SF Novel.

Reviews

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first 3/4 of this book is truly brilliant: Three separate story threads in alternating chapters, each very different and beautifully told. A joy to read.

The thread of Ori, essentially a slave of the ruling class, stationed on "The Whale" space platform above a gas giant planet, and working on the 10km tall platform to mine gases and metals from the planet below. McAuley brings his wonderfully descriptive prose to the construction-visualisation of the planet and the mining operation, and fleshes out this protagonist beautifully.

The thread of The Librarian is superb cyberpunk and space-opera, almost fantasy spell-casting in the digital world, an end-point of cyber-virtual-reality. The science and "code terminology" are wonderful, the best I have seen anywhere. The pacing is astoundingly good, a delightful chase and mystery rolled into one, with a delicious sudden love sub-plot.

And the thread of The Child is brilliant. It fully brings the first three books of The Quiet War into this final book, 1,500 years later and in another planetary system. We are shown the childhood and maturation of Sri Hong-Owen, the gene wizard, in virtual form. It's a wonderful tale of the child genius from her first feelings and science interests, embedded in a near-jungle Brasilia.

All three threads develop beautifully over 3/4 the length of the book, and then begin to combine in the final quarter. This is very well done, but the final pacing is a bit uneven (of necessity, perhaps).

In all of the book, we love and invest in the characters, and McAuley's prose is quite wonderful, rhythmic and superbly literate. The hard science is as good as it gets (withholding disbelief of course).

McAuley's work often includes a page or three of philosophy, underpinning the lives of his characters perfectly. I loved these parts of the book as they were spare and concise. See my updates below.

Highest recommendation, for the entire Quiet War series, of which books 1, 2, and 4 (this) are the best.

----------------
Updates:

3.0% ... Lyrical, eloquent, poignant, beautiful first chapter. So wonderful to read this

13.0% ... Paul McAuley is truly a writer of the first calibre. I encourage you all to discover especially his Quiet War series, of which this is the fourth book

37.0% ..... quotation: "But later in her life, whenever she thought of her mother and the things her mother had taught her, she always recalled that moment. It was the archetype of many such moments. So lives are shaped backwards, by what we choose to remember."

0.0% .... the cyberpunk hacking language here is the best I have ever seen. Delicious! (Note, I have been a first class programmer since I was 16 in 1969)

55.0% .... who knows what a "strange attractor"? Anyone? Awesome! .... quotation: "New recruits were also bad luck, according to the pilots. They were strange attractors that generated all kinds of chaos that was best kept way out front, away from everyone else."

80.0% ... Wow. Estoteric, what! ...quotation: "some place colder than absolute zero: a region of negative energy where atoms had not merely stopped moving, but had lost all integrity and shrivelled into the strings that composed their basic particles, and the strings themselves had frozen and ceased singing."

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best SF books I've read in the last couple of years. The last three novels of Paul McAuley have been food for my mind. This is science-fiction at its best, full of sense of wonder, thought provoking ideas about humanity, evolution, social order or artificial consciousnesses, interesting characters and great writing.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

FBC Rv

INTRODUCTION: As I have read and hugely enjoyed almost all sff Paul McAuley has written to date as well as a few of his near future thrillers, In the Mouth of the Whale has been one of my most awaited novels of 2012. While events in the duology The Quiet War/Gardens Sun impinge a little, this novel takes place far away in time and space and it's a standalone which can be read independently.

One thing of caution: as the main points of the two above novels are retold here, In the Mouth of the Whale contains huge spoilers for the preceding duology, though to be honest the characters and world building are such a big part of the enjoyment of the author's novels, that storyline spoilers are ultimately not that important.

And of course I highly recommend you to try The Quiet War and the stories from its universe, part of which the author has recently released inexpensively HERE.

The author describes the novel much better than I can on his website and I will reproduce his "overview" below, while the first 12 chapters can be read at the link above. As Paul McAuley says (and on reading the book I feel this overview presents the book pitch perfect):

"After you die, what do you do for the rest of your life?

The posthuman Quick settled the system of the star Fomalhaut long ago, and created garden worldlets and thistledown cities in its vast dust ring. An empire that after centuries of peace fell to a second wave of settlers, the fierce and largely unmodified True People. And now the True are at war with interlopers from another interstellar colony, the Ghosts, for possession of Fomalhaut's gas giant planet, Cthuga.

In the damaged and perilous Amazonian rainforest, the precocious Child is being groomed for her predestined role. But control of her story is fraying, and although she is determined to find her own path into the future, others have different plans.

In the war-torn worldlets of Fomalhaut, a librarian, Isak and his assistant, the Horse, are harrowing hells, punishment for a failure they can never live down, when they are given a new mission. The Library of Worlds has been compromised by a deep, mysterious conspiracy; as Isak and the Horse attempt to unravel it, they're drawn into the final battle for Cthuga.

And aboard a vast scientific project floating in Cthuga's atmosphere, a Quick slave, Ori, is snared in the plans of an eccentric genius. As the Ghosts mount their final assault on Cthuga, she discovers that she hold the key that determines the outcome of the war.

Three lives. Three stories that slowly draw together. And at their intersection is the mystery at the heart of Cthuga. Something dangerous and powerful. Something that may not only shape the future of humanity, but may also give control over the shape of its past."


ANALYSIS: Structurally, In the Mouth of a Whale is pleasantly symmetric with four main parts in which each of the three threads alternate modulo 3 starting with the unknown god-like narrator of the Child's journey, followed by Isak's first person narrative and ending with Ori's thread told in third person pov style. These parts have 12,12,9,12 chapters respectively, while the last part that concludes the stories of our main characters in three final chapters reverses the order, so now Ori's story is first.

The transitions are handled very well as they make you want to read what comes next in that particular thread, but also what comes next in the upcoming thread and the book maintains this balance to the end. The style transitions well too, from the more serene and slower moving chapters where the unknown entity narrates, to the immediate saga of Isak, the Horse and later Prem, where Isak comes as the typical "naive do gooder but very likable" hero of sf, so you cheer for him, to the action packed, darker story of Ori and the Quicks.

Overall the first three quarters of the novel were the kind I really wanted to just go on and never finish, while also reminding me why sf is still the most interesting literature when done superbly like here; sense of wonder, great characters, and for once the (as genre sff goes of course) stylistic daring I mentioned above. The last quarter was all action and things converged well with a great ending.

A combination of real - space shoot outs, strange habitats with everything from primitive life forms, dangerous animals to post modern grifters - and virtual action - harrowing hells, immersive drone combat -memorable characters and world building involving human/posthuman clades, slavery and superb references ("wreckers", "the True"...) weave into a rich tapestry that contains hard sf - biology and physics with a sprinkle of math - sociology and politics as well as a deep sense of history and what evolution means, while the speculations about future technologies and future possibilities for humanity are very convincing.

I also want to emphasize the "realistic feeling" that the author's exquisite world building induced, without info-dumps or too much jargon. I will direct you to chapter eight, so #3 in Isak's narration for a great example of this, while I will quote a few paragraphs here:

"A steady spout of water poured from a notch in the fountain's bowl, feeding a stream that ran off along a channel cut in the lawn, rippling clear as glass over a bed of white and gold quartz pebbles. We followed it through a rank of cypresses and emerged at the edge of a short steep slope of loose rock and clumps of dry grass. The parkland I had glimpsed from the flitter stretched away beyond, a mosaic of dusty browns and reds enlivened here and there by vivid green stands of trees. The sky had taken on the dusky rose of sunset, and clumps of stones glowed like heated iron in the low and level light. Rounded hills rising on either side hid the margins of the platform: the parkland seemed to stretch away for ever, like the landscapes of sagas set on old Earth.

Lathi Singleton dismissed my praise of the illusion, saying that it was simple stagecraft. 'My interest is in the biome itself. The plants and animals, and the patterns and balances they make. This one is modelled on Africa. You have heard of Africa?'

'It's where we first became what we are, Majistra.'

'I once kept a species of early hominin in this biome. Australopithecus afarensis. The reconstructed genome is contained in the seedship library; it was easy to merge it with Quick templates. And of course we hunted the usual Quick variants as well. But those happy days are long gone,' Lathi Singleton said, and walked off down the slope, stepping quickly and lightly beside the stream, which dropped down the slope in a ladder of little rills and waterfalls and pools, its course lined with red and black mosses and delicate ferns as perfect as jewels.

It grew warmer as we descended, and by the time I caught up with Lathi Singleton, at the bottom of the slope, I was out of breath and sweating. The stream emptied into a wide pool of muddy water whose margins had been trampled by many kinds of feet. Scaly logs lay half in and half out of the water on the far side. When one yawned, its mouth two hinged spars longer than a man's arm and fringed with sharp teeth, I realised that they were a species of animal.

'They won't hurt you because they can't see you,' Lathi Singleton said. It was the first time I had seen her smile. 'None of the fauna can see or smell anyone unless I want them too. Come along. I've arranged a little picnic. We'll eat, and I'll tell you what I need you to do, and why.'"


Overall In the Mouth of the Whale (top 25 novel of mine in 2012 and very likely a top 10, possibly a top 5) delivered what I expected and more and shows Paul McAuley at the top of his game.

[Ian Mond · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s no doubt that In The Mouth of The Whale is more engaging and entertaining read then it’s two predecessors, but it’s also a lot less satisfying. Given my problems with both The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun – at times they read more like technical manuals then novels – I could be accused of hypocrisy.

But while The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun drove me crazy with their endless descriptions of space plants and space engineering, the imagination on display was, at times, breathtaking. McAuley’s idea of how humanity might shape itself to deal with environmental and social change both at home and in the outer reaches of the solar system not only had a ring of truth about it but also evoked a genuine sense of wonder, even if my eyes did glaze over at times.

Set more than a thousand years after the events of the previous two novels I was genuinely excited by what McAuley might imagine as the future for post-humanity. And while the first chapter is intriguing, with lines like: So the Child, our dear mother, twice dead, twice reborn, dreams herself towards her destiny, when we move to Fomalhaut (a star 25 light years from Earth) it all becomes a bit humdrum. There’s nothing abjectly wrong with the separate tales of Ori and the Librarian, they just lack the spark of imagination that made reading The Quiet War and The Gardens of the Sun a worthwhile experience.

For example, while Ori’s people, The Quick, have been enslaved by The True she has dreams and ambitions that go well beyond her station. When her desires become clear to her fellow compatriots they feel the need to put Ori in her place leading to the sort of earnest and unsubtle pontification you’d expect to hear from Mr Carson on Downton Abbey:

"We were made to serve the Trues, and that’s what we do,” Inas said. “And we do it gladly. And because the Trues made us, Ori, they don’t think of us as people. We are their tools, with no more rights to independence than any of their machines. They can send any one of us on the crew anywhere, without explanation or warning. And we obey them because that’s what we must do. Not because the only alternative is the long drop, but because it is our duty, and nothing else matters."

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the depressing point McAuley is making – that conquering and enslavement of those weaker than us is in our nature, that no matter how advanced we become we will fall back on the well worn grooves of our past actions. This is further reinforced by the feudal society that the Trues have developed, almost medieval in nature, with certain families holding sway and power. But it’s not a very interesting argument. Not because it’s pessimistic, but because in terms of world building and imagining a future society, it seems like the obvious choice, to argue that humans will be humans. I expected something crunchier from the guy who wrote The Quiet War.

The second story involving The Librarian, Isak, has an epic fantasy / cyberpunk vibe that wouldn’t feel out of place in the 1980s. There’s a quest for something vague and mysterious and a battle against demons in numerous virtual realities. It’s, at times, genuinely exciting and engaging but only because it all feels so familiar.

If there’s any originality to be found in In The Mouth of The Whale it’s with the third narrative, a story of a child living in Brazil at a time three or so decades before the events of The Quiet War. This section gives us an insight into the upbringing of Sri Hong Owen – a major player in the first two novels. We soon discover that these historical interludes are not entirely accurate, that they’re being cobbled together by a mysterious third party with an agenda of its own. Here McAuley critiques the way we all revise history, how we manipulate and change it for our needs, to justify our actions of the present and future.

In the end, though, I couldn’t help but feel disappointing by In The Mouth of The Whale. There were times that I found myself wanting just a bit more space engineering if it meant evoking a sense of wonder.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another mind bending read by McAuley! This takes place about 1500 years after the Quiet War, and in a 'nearby' solar system-- Fomalhaut. The book rotates among three POVs, which can be confusing at first, but not nearly as confusing as trying to figure out the various parties involved. After the events in the Quiet War, humanity turned to the stars. Gardens of the Sun, the second volume in the series, ended with Sri Hong-Owen (reduced you might say into various cloned offspring) heading out to Fomalhaut. It turns out that three other ships from 'Homesun' also made the journey, but departed after Sri but arrived first. The first seedship to arrive at Fomalhaut brought the 'Quicks', post-humans who colonized the moons around Fomalhaut's massive gas giant. Centuries later, the 'Trues' arrived in another seed ship. Trues see themselves as real humans, not post, and they conquer the Quicks and make them their slaves. Coming late to the party are the 'Ghosts', who immediately went to war with the Trues for control of the solar system and the gas giant. Whew.

The three POVs involved are from a slave Quick Ori working on the Whale, a station located in the atmosphere of the gas giant and constructing a massive cable down to the core of the planet, a librarian True, who works on restoring from fragments the Quick library of knowledge, and 'the child', who we soon find out is Sri. Sri is the only character from the first two volumes found in this one, and that is unfortunate, as she is a megalomaniac sociopath; my least favorite character in the series. It seems that her ship will finally arrive to join the party, just as the war between the Ghosts and the Trues heats up. I will stop with the plot to avoid spoilers.

McAuley really lays on the speculative side of science fiction, while also describing in great detail various technologies and geological aspects of the world. The speculative concerns regarding the human condition are rather heavy handed (is humanity always fated to war and struggle for power, will the rich always oppress the poor, etc.), but somewhat inventive given their context in a distant future populated by three 'strains' of humanity itself. The seemingly endless description of tech bogged the story down for me as it was overwhelming at times. I finished the book because I wanted to find out how it ends, but it was not always a pleasant journey. 2.5 stars.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nicely-done far-future space opera, set in the future of McAuley’s “Quiet War” series. The place to start is the author’s summary:
http://www.unlikelyworlds.myzen.co.uk...
Back already? I thought the three-track narrative made it harder to follow the developing story — but it’s worth sticking with it.

Here’s the best review I found online:
https://www.sfsite.com/06b/mw370.htm by Greg L. Johnson.
This saves me from writing a real review. If you look through the reviews here (and elsewhere), other reactions are mixed but generally positive. I enjoyed reading the book, and liked the hopeful (if confusing) ending. 3.6 stars. Recommended for McAuley and space-opera fans.

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I wasn't expecting another novel following The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun, but Paul McAuley was clearly inspired by his soaring, sobering account of factionalism and evolution in the exotic environment of the outer solar system: In The Mouth of the Whale caps off a remarkable New Space Opera destined to become a classic of the genre. It takes place a thousand years after the Quiet War, in the Fomalhaut star system, but features the fates of key characters -- best not to read this one first. Destined to be one of the best SF novels of 2012.

[Devon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two of the stories in Whale are set around a gas giant in another star system, a far-future sequel to the events in McAuley's Gardens of the Sun. The big event going on is an approaching war between the Ghosts (post-humans from earlier books) and the True (unmodified humans). Within that big event you have the story of a lowly Quick (post-human slave) and an exiled True monk on a virtual-reality detective hunt. The third story in Whale is sort of a prequel to Quiet War, a VR simulation of the childhood of Sri Hong-Owen used to grow her clone.

The first two thirds of the book are fairly slow and a bit disorienting. I simply see no reason to care whether the Ghosts or the True win the battle for the planet, which kills any interest in the large-scale story line. The story of the Quick slave is boring because the character is a completely passive victim, though it's somewhat redeemed by great descriptions of the setting inside the clouds of a gas planet. The story of the True monk is pretty good with some interesting virtual reality tech. The story about Sri Hong-Owen (The Child) is a character I didn't like in the previous books, told from the perspective of her cult-followers who are trying to regrow her inside a virtual reality simulation. The stories improve about 200-250 pages in, and eventually come together at the end.

The overall effect is that of three barely connected novellas. The characters are mediocre and feel detached. The setting and stage are great ideas, but still feel somewhat unexplored.

[Scruffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the mouth of the Whale follows several offshoots of humanity competing for control of a gas giant. Within the planet is contained a strange and powerful Mind which could change both the future and the past of humanity. I won’t describe the plot any more than this because a lot of the fun of the book comes from getting to grips with the various plot lines.

This is a challenging read. There is a lot of terminology and history to get your head around and it’s not immediately obvious how it all fits together. It’s worth the effort though because as the story goes on we get more and more details which eventually give us a very complete view of this world. Most authors would just give us a big info dump at the start of the novel but I much prefer this method of storytelling because it slowly draws you in and involves you much more in the story.

It’s a standalone novel which is set in the same universe as the Quiet War series. You don’t have to have read those books to enjoy this but I think you’ll get much more out of it if you have. Many of the themes of the previous books are picked up here such as the fracturing of humanity and yet more ideas about the possibilities for our future evolution. There are some really big ideas presented here and it’s very satisfying when the true scope of the story is revealed. If you have read the previous books then this is probably not the book you were expecting. It’s very different from the others in the series which just goes to show the quality of Paul McAuleys writing and the versatility of the world he has created.

For more of my reviews please visit http://www.scruffyfiction.co.uk

[Liam Proven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is... odd. I liked it, but I did get a bit bogged down in the middle.

McAuley's pacing is very variable. He is, I fear, over-fond of what I call the "Use of Weapons" device -- but whereas in his more recent books, such as /Something Coming Through/, he alternates 2 converging timelines between chapters, in these novels he cycles between 3, 4 or 5 timelines, and it is hard on the reader.

These are rich, detailed, vivid novels, but not easy reads, and I suppose that I expect even deep hard SF novels to be easy reads, and that is arguably a failing of mine. I don't think I can recommend this one to most people; you must be patient and happy to juggle multiple timelines to get the best from this novel of the fairly far-future.

One detail that I enjoyed is that the "viron" -- VItual enviRONment -- in which a clone of one character is reared explores the surely-as-yet-unknown quite far future of mankind, as it speciates into different clades which in various ways resemble nonhuman Earth animals. This seems to me to be a nod to the earlier Confluence trilogy, which I confess I have not yet finished. I will return to it after this sequence, I think.

So, yes. Chewy stuff, but tasty for all that.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice sequel to the main books, set in a more distant future.

[Tarran Johnson-LeMieux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writing and the three different perspectives of the character keep the story moving. The beginning is slightly off-putting as McAuley uses the lingo of his character's world without explanation. After finishing the book I ended up liking this feature as it added to the distinct otherworldliness of the book.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

What it's about: A thousand years after the events of Gardens of the Sun, a war is taking place in the distant Formalhaut system, with the dictatorial and militaristic True Empire and their Quick slaves battling the descendants of the transhuman Ghosts. Amidst this, a ship bearing the consciousness of Sri Hong Owen approaches ever closer, bringing with it a promise of transformation.

Notes: 

The Quiet War universe of books moves into the distant future with this third book, the worldbuilding of which I think actually trumps the near-future intrigue of the first two books in its audacity and sheer sense of vertiginous alienness. While the first two books strove to maintain some connection to contemporaneous Earth, the societies and polities depicted in Whale are indubitably strange, and yet familiar in how the chords of human nature play out even millennia in the future under the light of a different sun.
The polities depicted in Whale, particularly the True Empire and its slaves, the Quicks, are a sobering example of McAuley's prognostications on what the terrible things that can happen when people obtain the power to bioengineer life at this level of sophistication. The baseline-human-fetishizing Trues have an overwhelming belief in their own superiority to the post-human Quicks, to the extent that they see Quicks as less than human and have free rein to treat them in the most inhuman ways possible, tweaking them without restraint to serve as their slaves and playthings for their most depraved pastimes. The True Empire, themselves, live across a smattering of planetoid bodies; their society is rigidly hierarchical, clannish, and militaristic, and they employ technologies they do not fully understand, that lend the book a kind of space fantasy vibe, what with various references to harrowing of Hells and purging of demons (essentially, entering virtual audio-visual representations of data structures to eliminate lethal computer viruses that have the annoying habit of downloading themselves into your brain and driving you insane).
That said, one gets the sense that, once again, McAuley lets his worldbuilding get way ahead of this storytelling. Narrative progression is essentially a vehicle for McAuley to introduce all his interesting sf concepts, and as one gets closer to the end, one can sense McAuley struggling to find a way to resolve the plot threads. At the very end, the story just runs out of steam and the collapse of the True Empire is relegated to a few passages without a clear link between the events of the book and the ending. Ultimately, despite all the cool concepts being flung around, reading the book didn't give me that much satisfaction in reading a self-contained story with a clear sense of what it wanted to say. It's like watching the beginning of a race, then skipping all the way to the finish - you don't really have a sense of how the winners got to the front.

Verdict: Suffused with McAuley's by-now signature imaginative power but lacking a compelling sense of story, In the Mouth of the Whale never really lives up to the potential of its fantastic sf premise.

I give this: 3 out of 5 bush robots

[Mikołaj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trzy cywilizacje post-ludzkie prowadzące w odległym systemie planetarnym brutalną wojnę o dostęp do gazowego olbrzyma, w którego jądrze spoczywa obcy Umysł... Oraz o przejęcie zapomnianego okrętu kolonizacyjnego z zapomnianej Ziemi, wiozącego na pokładzie Mesjasza który podobno umożliwi Pierwszy Kontakt... Trzeci tom naprawdę fenomenalnego cyklu SF, rzecz bogata, wielowątkowa, pełna naprawdę olśniewających wizji i idei, choć przez pierwszych kilkadziesiąt stron można czuć się poważnie zagubionym. McAuley niczym Dukaj lubi wrzucić czytelnika prosto do swojego świata i nie daje taryfy ulgowej. Ale tak jak w przypadku poprzednich części tego cyklu - naprawdę warto. Mocna i naprawdę oryginalna space opera, przemyślana i napisana z wielkim rozmachem, z wieloma smaczkami dla koneserów gatunku jak chociaż jedna z post-ludzkich ras, której przedstawiciele lubią nucić "pieśni odległej Ziemi" ;). Jest moc, to ta "Brytyjska Liga Mistrzów" co Reynolds i Banks, dałbym dużo żeby jakiś Netflix / HBO / Amazon wyłożył poważną liczbę imperialnych kredytów na ekranizację, oj byłoby co oglądać, polecam!

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a couple hundred pages into this and rather disappointed I'm afraid. I greatly enjoyed the first two books in the series, but this is just a complete departure where we are dumped into an unrelated storyline willy nilly. One of my pet peeves is when an author (apparently) has a complete plot line in his mind for a story, but fails to reveal any details that might make the story more interesting for the reader as the story progresses. For example, apparently the Trues are enslaving the Quicks in Fomelhaut. How did that happen? How long ago? Do we have any ideas as to what precipitated this conflict? Lacking any information in this regard, it becomes very difficult to care about the characters and identify with them. The three subplots seem so unrelated at this point that it's hard to imagine them weaving together, (although I'm sure they may at some point) and we're given no information, even in a peripheral way, as to how they might. The tedium to reward ratio on this one is just too high, so I'm afraid it's headed back to the shelf...

[Peter Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penultimate part of the excellent quartet. Thoroughly recommended.

Mr McAuley has developed his highly credible speculative universe against which he moves a variety of characters & political movements with conviction & aplomb. This episode of the saga adds some mysticism to the mix of hard science & political machinations, aware no doubt that "magic" is merely scientific knowledge we haven't discovered yet.
All of these elements and many more subtly philosophical ones are components of a fast-moving and dramatically plotted storyline

Lovers of so-called "hard" Sci-Fi should find this series (start at number 1 though) an engrossing and entertaining read.

[Colin Sinclair · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Big Story continues, and once again the focus is not only on the broad sweep of things, but also on the smaller individual tales that weave in and out of the grand historical stuff. I was initially wary, as the events in this novel take place long after the happenings of Gardens of the Sun, but I soon got used to the setting and the (mostly) new characters. If it all wrapped up a little neatly at the end, it was in any case more of a jumping off point to further events rather than any sort of solid conclusion.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recent Reads: In The Mouth Of The Whale. The third of Paul McAuley's Quiet War novels takes the story to Fomalhaut, centuries away. Three posthuman clades are fighting over a possible future in the system's dust cloud; a war that's about to get a visitor from the past. Excellent.

[Milton Soong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a lot of continuity from the previous book and confusing, abandoned...

[Nick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK. Too many ideas in the plot

[Tom the Guvnor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfection, the promise inherent in the first novel is achieved. Truly wonderful story telling and SF. I love the science, the language, the style, the excellence.

[David Raz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been a bit disappointed by the third book in the series, Gardens of the Sun, this one was a nice surprise. The book is much more dynamic, and the story, being told from three equally interesting perspectives, is fluent and engaging, giving another chance for McAuley's imagination to shine. I especially enjoyed how the author adds the elements of cyber(punk) to the mix, which already includes the biology and ecology. A second improvement is the move outside the Solar system. McAuley's description of life in the far reaches of the Solar system were on of the things I enjoyed in the first book, but they got a bit boring and repetitive in the second.
The end of the book loses a bit of steam and feels much less smooth. Still, this was a breath of fresh air for the series, four stars out of five.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have not read The Quiet War nor Gardens of the Sun, so no doubt I missed some of the A-HA! moments that other readers got. But the promotional copy said this could be read as a stand-alone, and I pretty much agree. McAuley explains pretty much everything - eventually, in some cases - that is clearly a hang-over from the other two novels, and the action certainly seems to stand by itself. I'm not sure whether I am now spoiled for those other two novels, or whether this will simply give me a different way of looking at them. Because I certainly intend to read them, which may be the biggest endorsement I can give of this novel. It makes me want to read more of the same universe.

The novel is told from multiple perspectives in multiple places. There's the Child, growing up in Brazil with what appears to be a fairly normal childhood, but which clearly is not - for a start she is referred to as "the Child," and capital letters may as well be glowing and red as well as capitals; then there's the fact that her part of the story is not told by an uninvolved third party or by herself, but by a 'we' who refer to the Child as "our dear mother, twice dead" (p4) and about whom too much knowledge has been lost. So, weird.

Then there's Isak, who is introduced while harrowing a hell with Horse, his 'kholop' (possibly terminology from the other books?), and whose life is as esoteric and bizarre as one could hope in an SF novel. Something of an outcast but still devoted to his family and his job, talented, and rather good at getting into trouble and usually getting out of it. Hells are technological rather than spiritual, but there's still something Dante-esque about them and their connection to the 'real' world.

Finally there's Ori, who works "on the skin of the Whale" (p19), whose jobs seem as dangerous as Isak's but with a lot less kudos. The Whale is a monumental craft orbiting... somewhere... and Ori and her kin are essentially enslaved workers, keeping it going for their masters. She's got ambition but seemingly little hope of fulfilling it.

These three stories look, for a long time, like their intertwining is going to take quite some stretch of the imagination. But intertwine they do, of course, and it works. But aside from the plot, one of the very interesting aspects of this novel is the storytelling techniques used by McAuley. The Child's story is told, very consciously told: the reader knows there is a narrator, because they break in every so often to comment on what is unknown or on various frustrations. Isak gets to tell his own story - he's an active narrator, choosing what to tell. And Ori, the slave, is the subject of a faceless narrator, with no choice over what is told or not. Very, very clever.

The plot? Well, it's set a long way in the future, and humanity has splintered into a number of different... I want to say genres, but that would be weird. I'll go with subsets instead. They do not coexist peacefully, and there's something that all of them want to control for very different reasons. And in their own way, the Child, Isak, and Ori all end up playing a part in the battle to control and use that object.

Each of the threads has some very interesting aspects to it along the way, of course. Through the Child McAuley explores a not-too-distant Earth, with gene modification and other such SFnal aspects but also family interactions and attitudes towards technology. Via Isak the theme of technology is continued, and how knowledge can or should be stored and used - and what it means to keep it safe. And in Ori the ideas of freedom and individuality are played out and explored.

Very enjoyable far-future SF, with quirky and fairly well-developed characters. Lots of fun to read.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://idearefinery.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/holiday-reading-four-reviews.html

In the Mouth of the Whale is the third book in McAuley's Quiet War series. I have read the previous two (The Quiet War [2008] and Gardens of the Sun [2009]), and I didn't love them. So why did I bother to read the third one?

The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun were both very closely related. Same characters, with the action in the second basically picking up exactly where the first left off. In the Mouth of the Whale, however, jumped ahead something like 200 years, and moved the action out of our solar system to Fomalhaut, 25 light years away. I thought that was an interesting choice for the third book in the series, and that's why I decided to give it a go.

The book concerns three characters, and the ways in which their stories intersect with a war over Fomalhaut's gas giant. The Child is being raised in a post-catastrophic climate change Amazon, groomed for a mysterious future task. Ori, a genetically engineered slave, works on a scientific research station orbiting the gas giant, and gets swept up in the war to possess it. And Izak, a disgraced outcast who travels Fomalhaut clearing networks of viruses ("harrowing hells"), learns of a conspiracy threatening the Library of Worlds.

For the majority of this book, I felt like I'd finally found a Paul McAuley novel that I could love. It has all of the action and big ideas of good space opera, with more than a passing nod to real, or at least plausible, science. I particularly enjoyed the way McAuley imagined its virtual worlds; I think writers of far-future space operas often fail to consider the ways in which the genre's tropes are affected by digital technology.

Unfortunately, the last quarter or so of the book left me a little cold. It felt like an early draft. Like McAuley knew where he wanted to go, but wasn't entirely sure how to get there smoothly, and didn't have time to sort it out. The prose seemed less natural, with more info-dumps. It was a shame, because I enjoyed the rest of the book so much.

[Robert Laird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having now read 3 of the 4 books in the Quiet War series, I have to say that the first book was fairly interesting and worthy of the praise it has received. The second book, Gardens of the Sun, a bit less so. And despite this third book bringing together a lot of the various elements from the previous two books, it was not a book that I couldn't put down. In fact, it took me far longer to finish it because, I think, it was simply not that interesting any longer. While I can recommend the series to anyone, it certainly wasn't on par with some of my favorite sf writers. It is an interesting universe created by the author, and he managed to maintain consistency and good characters throughout, but I just wasn't enthralled by it. I wasn't gripped with excitement and didn't "just have to know what came next." The end was fairly satisfactory, without too much being left unsaid. Thankfully, just a few pages from the end, the author did a good job of summing up everything that had happened throughout all three books, which made things a bit clearer. I actually appreciate him doing that. However, in most of the other space opera's I've read, it wasn't necessary because you were so immersed in the universe and the characters that you already had a good grasp of what was going on.

In a lot of my reviews, I put heavy weight on how well characters are fleshed out. McAuley did a good job (mind you, not a great job, but a good job) of characterizations, but unfortunately his characters, though quite 3-dimensional, just weren't very interesting to me. That leaves me in a quandary as to recommending the series or not. I think I'll attribute the lack of interest to something other than the author's skill -- maybe they just didn't interest ME -- and can therefore recommend the three books.

[Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the previous two in this series, but I have hope for the next...

[Michael Whiteman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is the third in the Quiet War series but skips forward hundreds of years, so the world we see here is far removed from the solar system we left at the end of Gardens Of The Sun. There is still a strong thematic and character-based connection to the prior novels but the world has advanced in many ways, some predictable from the other books, some less so.

The story is a lot more coherent than Gardens of the Sun and feels like it was conceived as a whole story rather than assembled from shorter pieces and ideas.

The three narratives we follow flesh out the world nicely, revealing details and workings of these societies as they go along. Each voice is distinct and the difference in each character’s situation and psychology is reflected in their narrative.

I did find myself regularly getting bogged down in the prose, similarly to other books by McAuley, but I enjoyed the plot enough that it wasn't a big issue.

Skipping forward so far means there is less of the nearish-future speculation which made The Quiet War and its sequel so interesting, but we get a big space opera romp instead, with a bit of examination of power structures, consciousness and possibilities of various types of post-humanity.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firstly, I'm a big fan of the author and his 'Quiet War' series. However, "In the Mouth of the Whale" is not of the same caliber as either "The Quiet War" or "Gardens of the Sun". These stories re-invigorated the (for me) moribund genre of space opera.

"Whale" is written in the same fashion of the series with alternating narration, and sweeping plot. However there are only three main characters here, one of which is the enigmatic Sri Hong-Owen, a figure in the series. I found Hong-Owen's storyline to be the only one of any interest. The other characters were mere caricatures. In addition, the plot was much more predictable than McAuley's typical work.

In general, other than "The Quiet War" and "Gardens of the Sun" the stories of the series ("Whale" and "Evenings Empires") have been a disappointment. Its not that the author doesn't have skill, I just suspect its that "The Quiet Sun" story has just been told and what has followed are just hollow adventures in comparison.

[Paul Trembling · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant bit of science fiction. with plenty of the mind bending concepts that I expect to find on the cutting edge of the genre. It's also a cleverly constructed story, weaving together three disparate strands and characters in a perfectly balanced and deeply absorbing story. There are some fantastic vistas as well: a vast factory / city floating in the atmosphere of a gas giant, a huge battle spreading across a solar system, the immense virtual world of the Library. But it also works at a very human level as the characters develop and grow against this incredible backdrop - and it is here that the writing is at it's deepest. It raises questions about what it really means to be human, and how advanced technologies might effect the answers. The story is quite complex at times, and there were parts where I struggled to follow it. However, my only real complaint is that there were too many unresolved issues at the end. Perhaps there's more to come?

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually enjoy McAuley's books a lot. I liked this one, but it wasn't a 4-star book. Good enough to entertain, but nothing to wow me. There were too many unanswered questions at the end for me to feel like I had narrative resolution. And unlike the two prior "Quiet War" books, In the Mouth of the Whale did not have a lot of discussion of biology, ecology, and astronomy, which I really missed. The three separate story lines in itMotW had plenty of twists and surprises but ultimately just came together and suddenly the book was over. For example, I wish we had learned more about the sprites and what was going on deep in the gas giant that the "Whale" floated above. I hope that Evening's Empires (which, like In the Mouth of the Whale, I purchased with my birthday money) will be more enjoyable.