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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
Interesting story based around time-travel and long exhausting war that spreads millions of years starting from the future backwards - yup you read it well, backwards :)[return][return]Characters are great - maybe not too fleshed out but nevertheless very well portrayed. Main characters seem to be of the Asher's favorite type - good person forced to live at the edge of society and do things that others find awful and distasteful and the brutish merciless one, perfect killing machine bred for war, assassinations and combat who finally discovers himself to be a person - not a robot. Now mix this with the most unexpected sort of time travelers and you are in for a treat.[return][return]Great read. Recommended.
I liked the concepts behind the story, but I don't think that I ever really understood them. Also, it felt like a 300-page chase that I got tired of after 150 pages.
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This books contains time travel. It should also be placed on the book on a sticker as a warning. Time travel if not handled with care can lead to extremely confusing plots and this book certainly has this issue. Cowl begins strongly with some interesting characters, but then become less intelligible as the book begins to lose control. There are ideas and concepts here there that I was not able to follow and the ending seemed to leave a large number of questions unanswered. There were also minor characters in the book whose point of view we had the story told from for no particularly good reason. These characters were added (I suspect) to flesh out this novel from a novella.
O tema Viagens no tempo é algo q me fascina e o livro "A Máquina do Tempo" é p mim o exemplo de escrita mais brilhante q alguma vez já existiu sobre este tema.
Infelizmente este livro revelou-se uma desilusão total e absoluta. Uma misturada de explicações científicas sem nexo nenhum com muito pouco interesse sobre a estrutura da história.
Infelizmente este livro revelou-se uma desilusão total e absoluta. Uma misturada de explicações científicas sem nexo nenhum com muito pouco interesse sobre a estrutura da história.
Having been used to reading tales within Asher's polity Universe, this one is a bit of a change. The main theme is time travel and a war between 43rd-century humans, or what they've evolved or been engineered into, as it effects others down the time line.
The Cowl of the title is one super-engineered human who has travelled back to the beginnings to time and, from there, sends organic time machines out to collect and return with human gene samples from across time. Trouble is the samples are usually live people, which the uncaring Cowl disposes of once he's finished with them but when he "collects" a prostitute and a bio-engineered assassin from the 22nd century his plans go a little awry.
Cowl is good, hard science-fiction that tries a different tack on time travel and the probability of possible timelines. The trouble I had with it is that, of all of the characters, none of of them are in any way likeable and I never really cared who got killed by whom and eventually I didn't care why either.
Good sci-fi but not his best work, regardless of the critical acclaim it achieved.
The Cowl of the title is one super-engineered human who has travelled back to the beginnings to time and, from there, sends organic time machines out to collect and return with human gene samples from across time. Trouble is the samples are usually live people, which the uncaring Cowl disposes of once he's finished with them but when he "collects" a prostitute and a bio-engineered assassin from the 22nd century his plans go a little awry.
Cowl is good, hard science-fiction that tries a different tack on time travel and the probability of possible timelines. The trouble I had with it is that, of all of the characters, none of of them are in any way likeable and I never really cared who got killed by whom and eventually I didn't care why either.
Good sci-fi but not his best work, regardless of the critical acclaim it achieved.
Dans ce roman, on suit les aventures de Polly et de Tack, projetés depuis leur XXIIIème siècle natal jusqu'avant l'apparition de la vie sur terre pour participer à une guerre qui ne devrait pas encore être la leur, mais qui se déroule à rebrousse-temps. Qui plus est, il ne s'agit pas d'une "simple" guerre, mais d'une lutte entre l'humanité et le post-humain conçu pour la remplacer. Bref, c'est LA grosse baston de la fin de l'histoire de l'humanité, mais qui se déroule au début des temps.
Bon, je ne vais pas essayer de vous résumer cette histoire plus avant, parce que ce serait assez compliqué (même si il serait assez intéressant d'évoquer par exemple les histoires de courbes de probabilités des univers parallèles). A la place, je vais plutôt vous dir ce que j'en ai pensé.
Pour moi, ce roman est de la SF hyperbolique. Autrement dit, trop de trop tue le trop. Que je m'explique ... (mais attention aux spoilers maintenant).
Ce roman met donc en scène une pauvre fille qui à la fin ne le sera plus, et un méchant bonhomme qui à la fin ne le sera plus non plus. Dit comme ça, ça a l'air simple. Sauf que comme [a:Neal Asher|56353|Neal Asher|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1207862001p2/56353.jpg] est hyperbolique.
Donc son héroïne est une pute toxicomane de 14 ans, et son méchant un tueur lobotomisé pour, surtout, ne jamais ressentir de culpabilité.
Dans le même ordre d'idée, les humains de leur futur qui vont les inviter dans leur guerre sont encore plus forts et plus méchants que ce méchant tueur. Et quand il s'agit d'aller remonter le temps pour trifouiller le passé et modifier l'histoire de l'humanité, personne ne songe à remonter au Christ ou aux premiers hommes. Non, on remonte avant l'apparition de la vie sur Terre pour tout bousiller. Et bien sûr, tous ces effets de manche occupent bien trop de pages pour que j'en sorte content.
Dommage, parce que certaines idées étaient intéressantes. Hélas, elles sont toutes scrupuleusement noyées sous des hectolitres de sang, des mètres-cubes de plomb et/ou une bête parcourant l'inter-espace pour détruire des réalités alternatives.
Bon, je ne vais pas essayer de vous résumer cette histoire plus avant, parce que ce serait assez compliqué (même si il serait assez intéressant d'évoquer par exemple les histoires de courbes de probabilités des univers parallèles). A la place, je vais plutôt vous dir ce que j'en ai pensé.
Pour moi, ce roman est de la SF hyperbolique. Autrement dit, trop de trop tue le trop. Que je m'explique ... (mais attention aux spoilers maintenant).
Ce roman met donc en scène une pauvre fille qui à la fin ne le sera plus, et un méchant bonhomme qui à la fin ne le sera plus non plus. Dit comme ça, ça a l'air simple. Sauf que comme [a:Neal Asher|56353|Neal Asher|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1207862001p2/56353.jpg] est hyperbolique.
Donc son héroïne est une pute toxicomane de 14 ans, et son méchant un tueur lobotomisé pour, surtout, ne jamais ressentir de culpabilité.
Dans le même ordre d'idée, les humains de leur futur qui vont les inviter dans leur guerre sont encore plus forts et plus méchants que ce méchant tueur. Et quand il s'agit d'aller remonter le temps pour trifouiller le passé et modifier l'histoire de l'humanité, personne ne songe à remonter au Christ ou aux premiers hommes. Non, on remonte avant l'apparition de la vie sur Terre pour tout bousiller. Et bien sûr, tous ces effets de manche occupent bien trop de pages pour que j'en sorte content.
Dommage, parce que certaines idées étaient intéressantes. Hélas, elles sont toutes scrupuleusement noyées sous des hectolitres de sang, des mètres-cubes de plomb et/ou une bête parcourant l'inter-espace pour détruire des réalités alternatives.
At its heart, this is a time-travel story, but Asher takes the various conceits of the time travel genre and turns them a little sideways. Basically, the two characters we follow - Polly and Tack - are from a somewhat near-future Earth, and a strange beast called the Torbeast drops 'scales' near them. One of these scales attaches to Polly, and she slips into the past - but only after a small shard of the scale snaps off onto Tack. From their, their stories slide apart, along a similar course, where Polly finds herself inextricably pulled further and further into the past, and Tack is caught by one of two factions of people fighting for the potential survival of humanity in all time-lines.
Though incredibly violent in places, the gore-factor wasn't too high, and the dynamics of Asher's time travel were easy enough to follow (the notion of 'Probability Slopes,' for example, was explained so well you didn't get lost in the pseudo-science of it all). Ultimately, there were a few twists that you find in most time-travel stories, but his take on the idea as a whole was quite good, and the politics of a far-flung future evolved human society were interesting and fresh.
I'd recommend it, if you're a fan of hard science fiction and/or time travel.
Though incredibly violent in places, the gore-factor wasn't too high, and the dynamics of Asher's time travel were easy enough to follow (the notion of 'Probability Slopes,' for example, was explained so well you didn't get lost in the pseudo-science of it all). Ultimately, there were a few twists that you find in most time-travel stories, but his take on the idea as a whole was quite good, and the politics of a far-flung future evolved human society were interesting and fresh.
I'd recommend it, if you're a fan of hard science fiction and/or time travel.
Confusing, and hard to follow. But interesting. But ... I wasn't satisfied by the ending.
A very interesting take on time travel with Asher's usual flair for action and mind-boggling tech. A very good read.