I just love books like this. They mash together so many interesting things that finally my brain wakes and start digging without feeling of been pushed to do it. I don’t understand everything now, there are too many layers to described conflicts and I’m too far away from central context of this book. But what I really love is tons and tons of naturally sounding references to The Real. In this days where so many books try to be something else entirely, to shed anything that can relate them to surrounding reality, to let the reader feel like standing between worlds. Too much escapism these days. Not a bad thing per se but very tiring sometimes. Hoorah to the breath of fresh air and real connection. The greatest thing is that this book about different point of views. There are no character development or crazy plot devices. It’s all about how different people (including reader) view, feel and think about stuff they’ve got to deal with. ( )

I don't know why I stuck with this book till the end. It was very difficult reading, and I really wound up understanding very little of it. I thought I'd remembered that the author's "Spin State" was very good and very heavy on the advanced physics and technology. This didn't have as much physics and technology to it. It did have too many people running around. And left too much unexplained along the way. ( )

April 20th, 2012, working on my review. Enviro-Chris will not be happy... ( )

This is a loose sequel to Spin State, features many of the same characters, but its plot doesn’t follow exactly on from the earlier plot. There are references to earlier events, but Spin Control can be read without having read Spin State. That, however, is the least of its problems. And, to be fair, its major problem is hardly its fault, it’s something that recent events have made problematical. Because Spin Control is set mostly in Israel. And this is an Israel that’s back at war with the Palestinians. The treatment of the Palestinians is certainly sympathetic (if not overly lionised) – and the treatment of Americans, Moriarty’s nationality, certainly not – but there’s still that whiff of admiration for Israel that is endemic in US culture. Which is a shame, because there’s a pure science-fiction thread to the narrative that seems mostly wasted. On the one hand, you have a defector from the Syndicates (genetically-engineered sort of communist clones) who is taken to Jerusalem to sell his secrets to the highest bidder – Mossad, its Palestinian equivalent, or the Americans – and which drags in some of the surviving cast of Spin State. But it’s all a plot, of sorts, to uncover a Palestinian mole, called Absalom, within Mossad. On the other hand, told in flashback, there’s the story of that same defector as one of the survivors of a Syndicate survey mission to a terraformed world. But there’s something weird about what they find – not just the fact it has been terraformed, since most terraforming attempts by humanity have failed, but also because there are weird things happening in the DNA of the flora and fauna. And when the survey team all come down with a fever, they work out that it’s caused by a virus which is using biology as a “Turing soup”, a sort of computational engine seeking an optimal terraforming solution. However, there’s a side-effect to the fever… and when this is revealed… well, Absalom’s identity seems pretty trivial. The survey mission narrative is nicely done, even if first contact puzzle stories are a genre staple; and marrying it with a near-future spy thriller is a nice touch. The setting of the latter is handled well, and each side is treated sensitively, but time, and geopolitics, has imparted something of a whiff to the Israeli-set sections and it’s hard to read them in light of recent events, or indeed the reader’s existing sympathies in the situation. Moriarty has shown she’s not afraid of tackling difficult subjects, both sfnal and real-world, and she’s good at it. It’s a shame she’s not better known. ( )

Started rereading this one for the 2nd time.

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04.17.12 I initially gave this 3 stars, but upon my 2nd reading, I decided to bump it up to 4. I found that at first, I was too wrapped up in one thread of the story, but it's actually quite tertiary to the entire thing. Rereading it, I gained a special appreciation for the two main story threads. ( )