Engine City
Engines of Light: Book Three
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
'A hectic ride, through slaloms of audacious complexity, irreverent ingenuity and paradox as purposeful as it is playful' - SFX
'Magnificent ... a series you'd be wise to follow from the start' - GUARDIAN
For ten thousand years the varied races of the Second Sphere lived in peaceful co-existence, building their civilisations under the gaze of the ever-vigilant cometary minds.
But then the cosmonauts of the Bright Star came. And with them they have brought a revolution ... For one of the Bright Star's crew has warned that an invasion of the Second Sphere is imminent and has armed the ancient city of Nova Babylonia against it.
Another cosmonaut thinks he's the very man to lead the invasion. The new regime of Nova Babylonia is certain it can withstand the alien onslaught. Whether it can defend itself against Matt Cairns is a question only the gods can answer ...
The acclaimed Engines of Light series that began with COSMONAUT KEEP and DARK LIGHT reaches its staggering conclusion in ENGINE CITY.
Books by Ken MacLeod:
Fall Revolution
The Star Fraction
The Stone Canal
The Cassini Division
The Sky Road
Engines of Light
Cosmonaut Keep
Dark Light
Engine City
Corporation Wars Trilogy
Dissidence
Insurgence
Emergence
Novels
The Human Front
Newton's Wake
Learning the World
The Execution Channel
The Restoration Game
Intrusion
Descent
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The final book in MacLeod's Engines of Light trilogy (Cosmonaut Keep; Dark Light) starts a bit slowly, its plotline divided among several different planets, but soon gathers steam. The Second Sphere, a volume of human-occupied interstellar space far from Earth, was established millennia ago by highly advanced aliens for largely inscrutable reasons and has been the home of several different human species, not to mention sentient dinosaurs and giant squid (aka krakens), ever since. Indeed, humanity has had to adjust to being the bottom species on the totem pole, since the saurs and krakens are technologically more sophisticated than us and control all interstellar travel. Even more overwhelming are the space-dwelling intelligences known only as the Gods. Now, however, a group of renegade cosmonauts with their own improvised starship has upset the balance of this complex society. In addition, the Multipliers, an alien race who've been interfering in the lives of Earth's species since prehistoric times, have returned to human space, offering a peculiar form of immortality and challenging the Gods for control. MacLeod (Dark Light) includes several of his trademark political debates and these are as engaging as always. The Multipliers, eight-legged creatures whose appendages subdivide to the point where they can manipulate matter on the atomic level, are fascinating and very alien indeed. The novel doesn't stand well on its own, but should please fans of the series as well as readers who appreciate hard SF with a political bent. (Jan. 22)FYI: Cosmonaut Keep (2001) was a Hugo Award finalist.
