291

Confusing, and hard to follow. But interesting. But ... I wasn't satisfied by the ending. ( )

43. aldar afsprengi mannkyns hafa skipst í 2 fylkingar og tekist á ógurlegum átökum. Mannverurnar hafa þróað sig og breytt bæði ásýnd og getu auk þess sem þeim tekst að uppgötva tímaferðalag. Slíkt útheimtir mikla orku en ein veran, Cowl, nær að flýja til upphafspunktar lífs á jörðinni þaðan sem hún ætlar sér að eyða andstæðingum sínum. Cowl sendir skrýmsli á sínum vegum til að merkja fólk á mismunandi tímaskeiðum sem sendist þá í tímastökkum aftur á bak í tímann allt til Cowls sem nýtir sér fórnarlömbin til gagnaöflunar við hernað sinn.
Asher nostrar ekki mikið við persónusköpun en helsti kostur sögunnar er tímaflakkið og hvernig hann vinnur úr þeim spurningum sem vakna upp við það. ( )

Asher, Neal. Cowl. Tor, 2004.
Neal Asher, an English science fiction writer who cites Roger Zelazny’s Amber series as a major inspiration, is right at home in a complex far-future universe. In his Polity books he detailed a multispecies interstellar war. In Cowl, he has two near-future humans get caught up in a time war waged by two far-future posthuman societies—the Heliothane and the Umbrathane, make what you like of the symbolic names. His humans are Tack, a genetically altered covert ops agent, and Polly, a young drug-addicted prostitute. The time travel technology is creatively nonintuitive, as it takes more energy to travel back centuries than it does weeks. The catch is that the further back you travel, the less probable you and your timeline become. The more unlikely you become, the harder it is to travel in time. At least, I think the way it works, but I stand ready to be corrected. I found the characters from the far future less engaging than Polly and Tack. But there is much action and the plot rolls along at a good pace. Of course, your mind is always engaged in trying to decipher the technologies and social structures into which you become immersed. 4 stars. ( )

An amusing time-travel novel, based on the "many-worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics (an interpretation for which there is no evidence or requirement). Asher has the wit to steal Heinlein's answer to the question, "How come I end up in the same place on Earth when I time-travel, despite the Earth's orbit, rotation etc?" and modify it only slightly. It is also fun to get away from Asher's "Polity" setting in this novel: may his publishers allow him to do so more often! ( )