Omega by Jack McDevitt

[samvara]

Wahh.

The man can't do decent character development and introduces everyone through little chunks of exposition. Having said that the idea was great and once I was past the first painful 100[0] pages the remaining 393[1] were worth it.

The human race knows an omega cloud will arrive near Earth in a thousand years. It will wreak havoc but it is too far in the future for human governments to respond to meaningfully. When a more innocent and dreadfully cute alien race is threatened by another cloud things become a little more urgent.

Utterly spoiling the plot.

I love the idea of giant clouds of hostile nanotechnology slowly crawling though space following massive spikey lures to their eventual explosive destination which might be a firework display for a race sitting sixteen thousand light years above the Milky Way.

[0] took over a week to read
[1] took about 2-3 hours

Comments

[evilmattikinz.livejournal.com]

Shall I post chindi? Which rips off XXXXXXXX totally but is entertaining in watching lots of stupid characters die through their own stupidity.

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

I'm of two minds; 1. It's a book and should therefore be mine and 2. It should go to someone who will appreciate his writing more.

[juffles.livejournal.com]

Hmm....have you read Slow Lightning?

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

Is that the one where it turns out they have made contact, only they murdered them and stole their ship and it's been a toy and she is investigating her sister's death?

Cos if it was... the character writing was a lot better than Omega.

[juffles.livejournal.com]

That's the one. Just wondering if I was blind to bad character development (quite likely) or if McDevitt was a bit inconsistent. :)

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

Vote 1 Inconsistent.

I enjoyed Slow Lightning.