Red Queen: The Substrate Wars
One of the odd things about Amazon’s Anglophone sites is a kind of review imperialism; for example, the UK’s site features UK customer reviews, then includes US reviews separately, for the good reason that there aren’t enough UK reviews for most books to be useful. But on the US site, UK customer reviews aren’t visible. Why? Because of individual country laws, the sites are separate, but all English-language reviews should be equally useful and visible. Ditto for Australia and Canada, and even India; and on those other country sites, there’s much less reason to write a review, because it will be seen by far fewer people.
So while I’m happy to see this nice review come in over at the UK site, the US customers won’t see it!
5 out of 5 stars
A frightening view of what could already be happening
By Mr. Victor Botterill on 12 Jan. 2015This is a fast moving book and it took me a while to tune into the characters. However, they are all very different and because a variety of opinions are expressed, it means that the central message behind a straightforward plot soon begins to emerge. The story literally starts with a bang.
Like all good science fiction there is an inbuilt theme which reflects the society we are living in and what could in fact happen in the future. Try to explain the story to someone else and it would sound far fetched, but clever “technical” descriptions of the physics and technology involved makes reading the tale believable. This book ends where another story will begin.
The Notes on Politics at the end are very useful and although the action is set in America, it is apparent as you read these notes that they accurately reflect what is already happening in the United Kingdom. This is a real wake-up call. Thoroughly recommended, though you may find it difficult to put down.