This is in large part a novel about hermeneutics, although the word is never used: how do you read a sacred text, how interpretation depends on all kinds of context (immediate, global, canonical, sociocultural), and -- most interesting -- how it is possible for a community to profoundly reinterpret its sacred texts in a way that moves from violence to peace, from a literal to a spiritual reading. The community, in this case, is an artificially recreated Mayan community; there's a similarly artificial Tamil community, but the themes are stronger in the case of the Mayans.

Oh, there's a plot, too, and it's a pretty good one (except for the cluelessness of the main character who is completely oblivious that his wife is having an affair, even though it is constantly telegraphed by everyone around him). But the real draw for me is the religious theme, and the beauty with which both cultures are portrayed.

In addition to hermeneutics, we see a prophet being made; discerning his message; spreading his message; learning to live according to his message; and being rejected, not so much by his community, but by one man who cannot get past his personal hurt and so condemns the whole world to annihilation. Good stuff. ( )

This is the sequel to A Million Open Doors, which was my introduction to Barnes. It's twelve years later, Giraut and Margaret are agents of the Office of Special Projects of the Council of Humanity, they're feeling middle-aged, and they've just had their vacation cut short for a new assignment to a really unpleasant planet. On Briand, two cultures that were artificial literary recreations and not overly tolerant of alternative viewpoints to begin with have been forced by inconvenient natural phenomena to live rather closer together than was envisioned when these two cultures were sold this very last of the partially-terraformable worlds at the end of the colonization period. And then things start to go wrong for Giraut, Margaret, and everyone else.

This is not a happy book, but it is consistently interesting. I should perhaps mention, for those who were put off by the violence of Mother of Storms and Kaleidescope that it has very little of that kind of graphic violence. ( )

A worthy successor to A Million Open Doors. The depth of the cultures is just as believable and stunning as the first book. The story was sad but in ways that were totally expected. Read this!

John Barnes is definitely a person I'd like to have drinks with. He's been one of my favorite authors since I read Orbital Resonance when I was 15 and couldn't believe that an old white guy understand what it was like to be a teenage girl. (Still don't know how he did it.) ( )

Better than the stuff he's been churning out lately it's still very dated and one imagines that Tom is wistful for the good old days of the old war. These Islamic terrorists must have him totality befuddled. Nonetheless a rattling good yarn for the airport or the beach. ( )

A very quick read. I wish I hadn't noticed the comparisons to Heinlein on the dust jacket, because it was very hard afterwards to not think Stranger in a Strange Land as I was reading this. A shame, since Barnes does a much better job with some of the same material. Overall: solid, thought-provoking hard SF. Interesting treatment of the messianic themes that entirely avoids Heinlein's obnoxious forays into omniscience. There's no side trip to Heaven here to cheat the essential question of doubt. There's plenty of other material here as well. The personal relationships between the main characters are often painfully true to life, though Barnes seems to have a heavy hand at times. There's some interesting musing on why humans keep going in a world where their efforts aren't actually necessary to survive that hits close to home for me, after all of these months of unemployment, but it isn't as keenly focused as in an Iain M. Banks. A good book, but not really much new ground broken. ( )