GoodReads Review: Heaven's Reach

[bobquasit]

Heaven's Reach by David Brin



My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I consider David Brin one of the three best genre writers among those who started writing after 1970 (the other two are Lawrence Watt-Evans and Steven Brust; Barry Longyear might be on that list except I think he started writing before 1970, and I haven't seen anything new from him in quite a while. Barry Hughart would be on that list if he hadn't had to give up writing due to his idiotic publishers).

I'm a huge fan of a lot of his work. His original Uplift trilogy is a favorite of mine. But I was disappointed by the first two books in his second Uplift trilogy. Heaven's Reach represents a significant improvement on those books.

It might get a bit too cosmic (in the same way that his Kiln People did, towards the end), but it's a solid, intelligent, imaginative, and well-written book. Perhaps I like it more because the action takes place out on the space lanes, rather than being cooped up on the sooner planet of Jijo.

Many mysteries are explained, and the resolution, while by no means tying up all the threads of the Uplift series, is quite satisfying. I plan to go back to the first two books in the trilogy to see if I like them better in the light of this book.

And I'll be re-reading the entire first trilogy before too long, of course.

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Comments

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Barry Longyear has been writing some short fiction of late; notably the "Jagger and Shad" stories featuring two detectives who happen to have artificial bodies; one looks like a movie portrayal of Sherlock Holmes and the other is a duck who used to be in ads for a certain insurance company.

His Wikipedia article notes the two "Alien Nation" novels he wrote; at the 2008 Arisia he noted that he didn't want to do the first one but his wife noted their finances and thus they exist.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

You know he was at Arisia, right?

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

In 2008 I ran into him in one of the dealer rooms (read his tag; didn't know him by sight) and then went to a panel he was on so, yeah. :) It was at the panel on mysteries that he noted it. Recalling now how when noting how the chairs were left after an RPG that was in the room before and him suggesting that he had ideas on how to arrange the chairs after "several twelve step programs" he said jokingly something like "Hello, I'm Barry and I'm a murderholic." :)

I recall that he was on at least one panel at the 2009 Arisia but I missed it. As at that time I may have been suffering from a certain illness, I'll use that as an excuse. :)