First of all, the characters are despairingly two-dimensional (make that one, for some). You don't know what they're here for and, frankly, you don't very much care. The story (or lack thereof) is strange to say the least: despite raves such as "no holds-barred adventure", nothing much happens, so that the books are marginally less thrilling than a 2,000-page financial report. (The focus of the story is a giant black hole at the center of the galaxy, and I can't help wondering whether that prompted Mr Benford to write books which are so empty of meaning. And to think that he needed almost twenty years to produce them!)

I won't even speak of the way a 30,000+ war against mechs (yuck!) is resolved in 3 minutes flat. I know it ain't over till the fat lady sings, but still...

Some aliens are interesting, but the story moves along and leaves them behind each time you think you're going to learn something about them! So tell me - why are they here? As filler? Hum. (For example, the best part of the series is, for me, the novella-size sea adventure of Warren in book two. But the aliens he meets are never spoken of again, and Warren himself disappears from the story after that. So, once again, what's the point?)

And the esty - a collection of places/times where/when one of the characters wanders for about 100 pages, meeting all kinds of people who don't have anything to do with the story. The first time is painful enough, but Mr. Benford does it to you *three* times in a row! A piece of advice if I may, Mr Benford: next time you want to write a book, please wait until you've got a real story, and not some disjointed ideas to mix randomly, because the resulting mix can be awful. And the philosophy of it! "The thing about aliens is, they're alien." Wow! OK, but once would be enough, don't you think? Why rehash it every ten pages or so?

If they awarded a price for "best disappointment of the year", this book (indeed, the whole series) would win it hands down...


...And then, a miracle happens.   August 18, 2000
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

This final novel in the "Galactic Center" set proves that even on a bad day, Benford can still whip out a fairly decent yarn.

Not up to his usual caliber, this novel seems even more disjointed than the previous few, and so much less lovingly spun than the "Ocean of Night" which started the series off. The changes in font are positively annoying, and the character development - or lack thereof - reduces the believability and likability of the people we're supposed to be rooting for. Particularly implausable is the dangerous, tin-man Mantis, whose mysterious and compelling behavior in the earlier novels is reduced to trying to find a "heart". I was sorely disappointed in this outcome, and I won't even discuss what a pitiful, sex-starved moron that Nigel Walmsley has become. It's just too painful.

Despite these and other disappointments, I have to give Benford credit for leaving this capstone open-ended, and providing the glorious, off-beat energy that makes his works so readable. I've never even written a published novel, and Benford has managed to pull together so much in this series, despite the reduction in degrees of freedom that the previous novels require to hold the story together. I can't help being reminded of Arthur C. Clark's "2010" where they somehow managed to change planets from Saturn to Jupiter. Sequels can be tough to pull off. We backed Benford into a corner, (or maybe he did it himself), and he performed well enough to merit a moderate "thumbs-up". I have definitely read worse


Not Terrible, but Weakest of the Series   September 10, 2005
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Perhaps Dr. Benford didn't give himself enough time to produce the conclusion this series really deserved. The preceding books, "In the Ocean of Night" (1977), "Across the Sea of Suns" (1984), "Great Sky River" (1987), "Tides of Light" (1989), and "Furious Gulf" (1994) had set up a galaxy of humans, intelligent mechanical entities, vast magnetic beings, myriapodia and other varied aliens, complex astrophysical structures, some artificial, surrounding the galactic center, and the chaotic and uncertain "esty" in the wedge hugging the galactic black hole. Each preceding book had introduced fascinating new entities inhabiting the galaxy and locations for the drama to play out, but this one stayed within the final "esty", chaotic and perhaps infinitely varied to be sure, but somehow full of sameness in its chaos.

The new characters here are god-like higher beings hinted at in the earlier books - and their actions are really not well explained, except that they ally themselves temporarily with the humans against the mechanicals, to turn things around from the death and destruction wrought to this point. The "esty" (space-time or S-T) was specifically designed by these higher beings in the distant past to accommodate organic life and exclude the machines. This last novel journeys, at one point, billions of years into the future; it also finds Toby in adventures that echo Mark Twain's Mississippi river boat escapades, though here he is going uphill on a river of flowing time. The varied human settlements in the "esty" are occasionally fascinating, but as with the environment itself, there's a certain sameness that seems to stretch the novel beyond what is really needed.

We do learn more about Nigel Walmsley here, clarifying some of the connections between the first two books and the remainder of the series. And the mystery of why Killeen, his father, and his son are so important is resolved, though in a somewhat hokey fashion (does the DNA explanation really make any sense?) The conflict and contrast between humans and mechanicals is further elucidated: the robot/mechanical minds lack laughter, and wonder what purpose it serves. They see life very differently: their minds can be eternal, even as their bodies are frequently discarded and replaced with new upgraded models. In contrast, organic life starts anew with each generation; minds are constantly renewed and also constantly faced with their own extinction - is that the root of the difference? And yet the "higher powers" seem to have overcome these differences, though Benford has little description of how that could happen - and what exactly have they done with Walmsley, who is surely not the same as the original after all these years?

The end for the powerful Mantis is another long trek that seems sad and almost purposeless - couldn't we just get it over with? Benford does finally get to a reasonable conclusion; it's not a bad one, there's hope for the future. But compared to the other novels in the series, this one is certainly a disappointment.