The Machine's Child
THE MACHINE'S CHILD (Kage Baker) - Three Stars
I kind of wonder what this series might have been like had Baker made up her mind a little earlier. The first three books were all focused on the individual (Mendoza, Joseph, Mendoza), and pretty much stayed in one place and told one story. And they were good.
Much of the last few books have a much broader scope: numerous characters, places and times. The "X-Files" conspiracy angle of the storyline has come to the forefront, and Baker has handled this stylistic device with adroitness. Instead of becoming a jumbled mess, I've found the macro-scale Machiavellian politics to be some of the more interesting parts of the series.
But, I fear, at the end of this book the series takes a turn for the worse.
It may seem a strange complaint for a book about time-traveling cyborgs, but it asks me to suspend my disbelief just a little too far. I don't have any expectations of a happy ending, and I won't hold Baker to task for characters doing things I don't like. I do, however, expect them to be consistent, or at least have reasonably explained development (apologies to Mr. Twain, my stance could be summed up something to the effect of "When a personage acts like an intelligent, confident, aggressive, bold, lively entity at the start of a sentence, he shall not act like an inconsequential milquetoast at the end of it").
Quite simply, my problem is this: nowhere in the history of time has a version 3.0 been weaker or less advanced than a version 2.0. Regardless of whether or not I like or dislike Nicholas (Adonai v.1.0), Edward (Adonai v.2.0), or Alec (Adonai v.3.0), I just can't bring myself to accept that Edward, who spent his entire life in the 19th century, could quickly "out-learn" high-end technical concepts better than 23rd/24th Century Alec and Captain Morgan (the world's most powerful A.I.) (especially considering that Alec initially was presented to the reader as an astonishing mechanical/technical savant). I don't buy it.
I also take technical issues with how Nicholas, Edward, and Alec, at one point three very separate and uniquely developed characters, have been kind of boiled down into simple writer's constructs (Nicholas: melancholy or invisible, except when his fundamentalist rage would serve to move the plot along; Edward: one-note conniving superiority; Alec: depressive dimwit, a jarring change from the way he was initially written); and how Mendoza, also a well-fleshed out character, has been hollowed out into almost an emotionless object.
I'm already reading the eighth and final book in the series, but the ending of this one did not encourage me.
I kind of wonder what this series might have been like had Baker made up her mind a little earlier. The first three books were all focused on the individual (Mendoza, Joseph, Mendoza), and pretty much stayed in one place and told one story. And they were good.
Much of the last few books have a much broader scope: numerous characters, places and times. The "X-Files" conspiracy angle of the storyline has come to the forefront, and Baker has handled this stylistic device with adroitness. Instead of becoming a jumbled mess, I've found the macro-scale Machiavellian politics to be some of the more interesting parts of the series.
But, I fear, at the end of this book the series takes a turn for the worse.
It may seem a strange complaint for a book about time-traveling cyborgs, but it asks me to suspend my disbelief just a little too far. I don't have any expectations of a happy ending, and I won't hold Baker to task for characters doing things I don't like. I do, however, expect them to be consistent, or at least have reasonably explained development (apologies to Mr. Twain, my stance could be summed up something to the effect of "When a personage acts like an intelligent, confident, aggressive, bold, lively entity at the start of a sentence, he shall not act like an inconsequential milquetoast at the end of it").
Quite simply, my problem is this: nowhere in the history of time has a version 3.0 been weaker or less advanced than a version 2.0. Regardless of whether or not I like or dislike Nicholas (Adonai v.1.0), Edward (Adonai v.2.0), or Alec (Adonai v.3.0), I just can't bring myself to accept that Edward, who spent his entire life in the 19th century, could quickly "out-learn" high-end technical concepts better than 23rd/24th Century Alec and Captain Morgan (the world's most powerful A.I.) (especially considering that Alec initially was presented to the reader as an astonishing mechanical/technical savant). I don't buy it.
I also take technical issues with how Nicholas, Edward, and Alec, at one point three very separate and uniquely developed characters, have been kind of boiled down into simple writer's constructs (Nicholas: melancholy or invisible, except when his fundamentalist rage would serve to move the plot along; Edward: one-note conniving superiority; Alec: depressive dimwit, a jarring change from the way he was initially written); and how Mendoza, also a well-fleshed out character, has been hollowed out into almost an emotionless object.
I'm already reading the eighth and final book in the series, but the ending of this one did not encourage me.
posted by Kevin at 2:21 PM
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