Review: Crash by Sean Williams

Just as action-packed as its predecessor Crash (published outside of Australia as Crashland,) opens directly where the events of Jump (or Twinmaker) left off. Clair has betrayed her friend Q (an AI with some very humanlike qualities,) and the D-Mat network (a teleportation operation system, similar to what was used on Star Trek) is broken, leaving many people around the world stranded. A number of groups with conflicting philosophies want to work with Clair, and the peacekeepers want to use her to track down Q who may hold the key to fixing the d-mat network. There are a number of dupes who want her killed. And then, of course, there is Clair's budding relationship with abstainer Jesse. But who can Clair really trust?

As I said, this one is just as action-packed as the first book in the series. The narrative is a little confusing at times as Clair tries to navigate her way safely through this new world and attempts to track down Q. The answer to who is responsible for most of the drama is a surprising, though fitting, one. Clair is a resourceful heroine, but she also has many humanlike qualities that give the character a real sense of balance. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of Jesse--as a character who has abstained from the technology in the book, he felt to me as a reader to be a bit of a link between the real world and the futuristic world that is depicted in the series. Or maybe that's just me. 

One element of the book that absolutely deserves more discussion is Q. Q is six day old Artificial Intelligence with some very humanlike qualities--Q has a gender and an emotional range that causes her to spend most of the novel sulking and refusing to answer Clair's repeated calls for help. As one of the characters notes about Q, she is smarter than the characters in the book, but what keeps her at their level is her inexperience. (She is, after all, just six days old.) And Q is, of course, the real reason why so many groups are interested in Clair. Whoever can reach out to Q--or possibly control her--is the person who holds all the power. 

Crash was an enjoyable read and I highly recommend this series to anyone who is looking for a Sci-fi book with young, resourceful and realistic characters, and a read that does not rely on the usual YA/mass market tropes. 

Highly recommended.

Finally, a big shout out to author Sean Williams for my copy of Crash. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more