Also, the extremely post-cyberpunk posthumans, and each member of the crew is a different extremely capable kind of fucked up model of what we might become, with the protagonist personifying the genre of horror that it is, while still being occasionally hilarious.
Despite being fundamentally a cosmic horror novel, and relentlessly math-in-the-back-of-the-book hard scifi it does what all the best cyberpunk does and shamelessly flirts with the supernatural at every opportunity. The sequel doubles down on this, and while not quite as good overall (still exceptionally good, but harder to follow) each of the characters explores a novel and sweet+sad+horrifying kind of love.
Characters in the sequel include a hive-mind of post-science innovation monks, a straight up witch who charges their monastery at the head of a zombie army, and a plotline about finding what the monks think might be god. And that first scene, which is absolute fire btw.
Primary themes include… Well the bit of exposition about needing to ‘crawl off one mountain and cross a valley to reach higher peaks of understanding’, and coping as a mostly baseline human surrounded by superintelligences, ‘sufficiently advanced technology’, etc.
Also, the extremely post-cyberpunk posthumans, and each member of the crew is a different extremely capable kind of fucked up model of what we might become, with the protagonist personifying the genre of horror that it is, while still being occasionally hilarious.
Despite being fundamentally a cosmic horror novel, and relentlessly math-in-the-back-of-the-book hard scifi it does what all the best cyberpunk does and shamelessly flirts with the supernatural at every opportunity. The sequel doubles down on this, and while not quite as good overall (still exceptionally good, but harder to follow) each of the characters explores a novel and sweet+sad+horrifying kind of love.
Oooh, I didn’t even know it had a sequel!
I wouldn’t say it flirts with the supernatural as much as it’s with one foot into weird fiction, which is where cosmic horror comes from.
Characters in the sequel include a hive-mind of post-science innovation monks, a straight up witch who charges their monastery at the head of a zombie army, and a plotline about finding what the monks think might be god. And that first scene, which is absolute fire btw.
Primary themes include… Well the bit of exposition about needing to ‘crawl off one mountain and cross a valley to reach higher peaks of understanding’, and coping as a mostly baseline human surrounded by superintelligences, ‘sufficiently advanced technology’, etc.