plantedbypiggies's review against another edition
1.0
I've read a ton of books this year. Hands down, this is the worst traditionally published book I've read this year. I had two primary complaints: structure and content of a violent and sexual nature.
Structurally, the book is split over three different eras: ancient BCE history, the present day, and the far future. Fair enough, the story told is a big one, and the three eras each have a major part of the story. But the way the eras presented is interwoven. The chapters alternate: Far future, far past, and then present. It follows this pattern through pretty much the entire book. I think the book would have been better presented by breaking it into three parts (past, present, and future) and presenting it in larger chunks. As it is, I had a hard time keeping track of the three different story lines. It was also hard keeping my interest level up. I very nearly just skipped around sequentially, but that would have been breaking the rule of the book. The author thought the story should be presented in this way, and so he did. And it was an absolute failure.
Second, the story was just gratuitous. I have no issues with violence or sexual content in a story. But it's got to serve a purpose. Every single chapter would have extended scenes of violence. It would get to be repetitive and, frankly, boring. If the violence had been used more sparingly and there had been more focus on character development and world building, the book would have been so much better. Also, if there had been some actual romantic development rather than sex just for the sake of titillation, I would've been far more interested. Instead, the sex invoked an odd Clive Barker-esque sense of revulsion in me. Like it was there only to be depraved and horrific.
I've only ever read one Warhammer novel: Fulgrim by Graham McNeill. I didn't like it. But Age of Scorpio reminded me a lot of Fulgrim in terms of feel (and I liked it even less). It's as though Smith was auditioning for a spot on the Warhammer roster. The kindle version of the book was low-priced, and I think I know why.
Structurally, the book is split over three different eras: ancient BCE history, the present day, and the far future. Fair enough, the story told is a big one, and the three eras each have a major part of the story. But the way the eras presented is interwoven. The chapters alternate: Far future, far past, and then present. It follows this pattern through pretty much the entire book. I think the book would have been better presented by breaking it into three parts (past, present, and future) and presenting it in larger chunks. As it is, I had a hard time keeping track of the three different story lines. It was also hard keeping my interest level up. I very nearly just skipped around sequentially, but that would have been breaking the rule of the book. The author thought the story should be presented in this way, and so he did. And it was an absolute failure.
Second, the story was just gratuitous. I have no issues with violence or sexual content in a story. But it's got to serve a purpose. Every single chapter would have extended scenes of violence. It would get to be repetitive and, frankly, boring. If the violence had been used more sparingly and there had been more focus on character development and world building, the book would have been so much better. Also, if there had been some actual romantic development rather than sex just for the sake of titillation, I would've been far more interested. Instead, the sex invoked an odd Clive Barker-esque sense of revulsion in me. Like it was there only to be depraved and horrific.
I've only ever read one Warhammer novel: Fulgrim by Graham McNeill. I didn't like it. But Age of Scorpio reminded me a lot of Fulgrim in terms of feel (and I liked it even less). It's as though Smith was auditioning for a spot on the Warhammer roster. The kindle version of the book was low-priced, and I think I know why.
gerhard's review
4.0
Wow.
Gavin G. Smith’s The Age of Scorpio is like a paean to the Golden Age of SF, stuffed to the gills with bad-ass weaponry, hi-tech, monsters and derring do, but very much infused with the zeitgeist of the modern genre.
Which means copious quantities of gratuitous slaughter of the innocents, presided over by various galactic factions (from murky church leaders to aliens), all hoping to get their respective claws, tentacles, feelers or hands on the last remnant of an ancient civilisation’s incomprehensible technology. The story is like Pandora’s Box, only with a fuck-load more bells, whistles and booby-traps.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Smith’s name recalls another stalwart of Golden Age Space Opera, namely E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith. Another trend of modern SF, especially New Space opera (think Iain Banks and Peter Hamilton), is to thread together multiple narratives. Smith here has three disparate plot strands: ‘Southern Britain, a Long Time Ago’, ‘Now’ and ‘A Long Time After the Loss’.
The linkages and interpolations between these distinct storylines and periods are intuitive rather than implicit, with Smith relying on the genre savviness of the reader to make the necessary deductive leaps. I think it is for this reason that a lot of Goodreads reviewers have labelled this novel as ‘incoherent’; one only has to see how many of these are dyed-in-the-wool SF readers.
I think that presenting a coherent New Space Opera, one that is logically extrapolated from our current socio-cultural milieu, and one that also takes technology in logical, as well as unexpected, directions, is one of the most difficult genre undertakings, and also the one most fraught with pitfalls.
Smith is well aware of his antecedents, hence such concepts as Known Space (Larry Niven) and neunonics (Peter Hamilton), but adds so much of his own brio to the mix that these come across as welcome nods to old friends.
An extraordinarily confident writer, Smith is capable of writing extended action scenes that make Game of Thrones seem like a Sunday School picnic, especially those set in Ancient Britain. More importantly, the reader is not jaded by any of these set pieces, due mainly to a careful investment in characterisation that pays off handsomely over the long run of this impressive and quite spectacular novel.
Gavin G. Smith’s The Age of Scorpio is like a paean to the Golden Age of SF, stuffed to the gills with bad-ass weaponry, hi-tech, monsters and derring do, but very much infused with the zeitgeist of the modern genre.
Which means copious quantities of gratuitous slaughter of the innocents, presided over by various galactic factions (from murky church leaders to aliens), all hoping to get their respective claws, tentacles, feelers or hands on the last remnant of an ancient civilisation’s incomprehensible technology. The story is like Pandora’s Box, only with a fuck-load more bells, whistles and booby-traps.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Smith’s name recalls another stalwart of Golden Age Space Opera, namely E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith. Another trend of modern SF, especially New Space opera (think Iain Banks and Peter Hamilton), is to thread together multiple narratives. Smith here has three disparate plot strands: ‘Southern Britain, a Long Time Ago’, ‘Now’ and ‘A Long Time After the Loss’.
The linkages and interpolations between these distinct storylines and periods are intuitive rather than implicit, with Smith relying on the genre savviness of the reader to make the necessary deductive leaps. I think it is for this reason that a lot of Goodreads reviewers have labelled this novel as ‘incoherent’; one only has to see how many of these are dyed-in-the-wool SF readers.
I think that presenting a coherent New Space Opera, one that is logically extrapolated from our current socio-cultural milieu, and one that also takes technology in logical, as well as unexpected, directions, is one of the most difficult genre undertakings, and also the one most fraught with pitfalls.
Smith is well aware of his antecedents, hence such concepts as Known Space (Larry Niven) and neunonics (Peter Hamilton), but adds so much of his own brio to the mix that these come across as welcome nods to old friends.
An extraordinarily confident writer, Smith is capable of writing extended action scenes that make Game of Thrones seem like a Sunday School picnic, especially those set in Ancient Britain. More importantly, the reader is not jaded by any of these set pieces, due mainly to a careful investment in characterisation that pays off handsomely over the long run of this impressive and quite spectacular novel.
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