This is the first volume in MacLeod's "Engines of Light" trilogy (the other 2 being "Dark Light" and "Engine City"). Although full of interesting ideas the whole series seemed to fall a little flat to me but you may feel differently.

The book contains 2 interleaving story threads - one set in a near future Earth where Communism has made a major comeback in the EU and the other set in the distant future on a strange world where humans, little grey aliens and dinosaurs co-exist (and are visited by starships driven by giant squid). The connection between the threads soon become pretty clear.

As with most of MacLeod's work, politics and the clash of ideologies are at the core of the story - most of the time he makes it interesting but sometimes its a drag.

Picked up at the breakfast meetup this morning.

I'm always a sucker for science fiction, especially by authors I don't know, so thought this looked worth a try.

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I really enjoyed this book - lots of interesting new ideas, and very little to cringe at in the science (especially in the computer stuff - it's so nice to read a book involving VR that's actually written by someone who works with computers and vaguely knows what he's talking about!). The politics did get a bit involved at times (I'm still not entirely sure what was going on with some aspects of the revolt on the asteroid), but the story moved along well despite that.

I'll need to track down the other two books in the series now!

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