Kil'n people
David Brin
Orbit
Paperback, 502 pages
Reviewed by Liz Simmonds, 15 June 2005
This book is disappointing. I tried to read it and gave up on it. Persuaded
to try again, I did finish it, but it was a page counter, not a page turner.
It is not a terrible book, but for Brin it is second rate. It is a mediocre
recitation of the days of the lives of several golem detectives. There are
some wonderful inbuilt puns, the plotting is superb, and yet the book, for me,
fails.
The themes of identity, religion and other layers of reality are similar
but better developed or resolved by Simak. The writing lacked the vividness
of a Chandler. Time passes thus in The Lady in the Lake, by Chandler: 'The
minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.'
This fails because the characters are self-similar. Literally. Various
iterations [dare I say"diterations"] of the anti-hero go through Amazing
Adventures. And Brin has carefully thought out the consequences of his
invention. But there is no pictorial dimension as in the Uplift series. The
incredible vastness of the Uplift Universe is replaced by a dull and drab one,
brilliantly thought out as it is.
Finished it. No more to say. Compared with the Uplift Saga, with the
multiple languages and viewpoints of the later stories, this one was a
drag.
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