Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Cenotaxis by Sean Williams

Cenotaxis was my first time to read a Sean Williams story.   Some of the reviewers I follow liked this short book so I thought it would be a good one to try.


This story follows Imre Bergamasc's trip to Earth.  He is trying to force Earth to join in the quest to discover the source of the "Slow Wave" that devastated the galactic civilization in an earlier book-Saturn Returns.  To his dismay, he runs into a rebellion led by Jasper, a man who claims to be God.  Jasper does not live his life in a linear fashion.  His future occurs before his past.  While he is not omniscient, he is able to sense events before they happen.


Jasper and the way he lives his life is an interesting character.  Along with Jasper the other fascinating idea is the Apparatus.  It seems to be an A.I. that Imre is trying to track down.


Without having read Saturn Returns, I found this story to be interesting but lacking.  It was hard to connect with the characters.  It was never explained why Earth is so important to Imre's plans.  The other mystery that is never explained is the true nature of Jasper.  Maybe future books will answer these questions but the explanation was not given in this story.


I will have to go back and read the other books and see if this story works better as part of the series. 

1 comment:

Carl V. Anderson said...

Love the cover!

I haven't read Williams' work before. On some levels I feel that books should stand on their own, but it is hard to know just what kind of feel you would have had for this story had you read the one that came before.