Homer's Travels: Book: Chris Moriarty's "Spin State"

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Book: Chris Moriarty's "Spin State"

My first book of 2009 was Chris Moriarty's "Spin State".  This is an interesting book involving interesting science that doesn't quite make it as a good book.

The novel starts out in the right direction.  We follow the main character, Major Catherine Li, a UN Peacekeeper sent to investigate the accidental death of a renown quantum scientist.

The science involved is plausible and is backed up with an extensive seven page bibliography.  Quantum entanglement, teleportation, Bose-Einstein condensates, artificial intelligence, virtual worlds, brain enhancing technologies, post-human genetic engineering - it's all there in a well balanced and almost believable way.  I say almost because all the tech talk can be a little overwhelming at times.

The book trips up about a third the way through when the story telling slows to a crawl.  At 597 pages, it was to long.  You probably could have removed 200 pages without loosing too much of the story.  Unfortunately the last 200 pages are rather predictable.  The result is a book with a promising start that gets bogged down and disappoints.

I'm not sure I can recommend it.

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