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A review by ninjalawyer
Blood Music by Greg Bear, Peter Cuypers
3.0
This was a mainly enjoyable book, although fairly uneven.
The plot begins with a main character, a research scientist, developing modified lymphocytes from his own cells. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that he ends up injecting himself with those same cells, or that they begin modifying his body. The scifi premise of someone injecting him or herself with a drug, and being improved (e.g., Limitless) is cliched by now, but that's only just the beginning. The lymphocytes are intelligent cells with their own purposes, they speak to this main character and quickly spread out of anyone's control in a satisfying way that (without spoiling too much), blends apocalyptic scifi with singularity (transcendence) scifi in an interesting way.
Unfortunately, the characters are almost all uniformly bland, and it's difficult to care about any of them. I think a lot of this has more to do with Bear's dialogue rather than the descriptions of the characters. Every character speaks in the same voice, and they all tend to speak in a somewhat mechanical way that's just good enough to propel the plot. Ironically, the most engaging character(s) in this book is the modified lymphocytes.
So what you end up with is an interesting plot and well-described world, but with dull characters. And up to the two-thirds point, that was almost enough. Up to that point, the book moved briskly, the ideas were fascinating and the science somewhat believable.
At the two-thirds mark however, a character was brought in to provide a pseudoscience explanation on how there were so many modified lymphocytes (trillions) that they were warping space-time by looking at it too hard (really). This is a silly plot device that ignores basic science and seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the observer effect in quantum physics. That would have been fine in a book supported by interesting characters. Unfortunately, this book relies on descriptions of plausible science to carry it, so without that it falls apart a bit.
The plot begins with a main character, a research scientist, developing modified lymphocytes from his own cells. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that he ends up injecting himself with those same cells, or that they begin modifying his body. The scifi premise of someone injecting him or herself with a drug, and being improved (e.g., Limitless) is cliched by now, but that's only just the beginning. The lymphocytes are intelligent cells with their own purposes, they speak to this main character and quickly spread out of anyone's control in a satisfying way that (without spoiling too much), blends apocalyptic scifi with singularity (transcendence) scifi in an interesting way.
Unfortunately, the characters are almost all uniformly bland, and it's difficult to care about any of them. I think a lot of this has more to do with Bear's dialogue rather than the descriptions of the characters. Every character speaks in the same voice, and they all tend to speak in a somewhat mechanical way that's just good enough to propel the plot. Ironically, the most engaging character(s) in this book is the modified lymphocytes.
So what you end up with is an interesting plot and well-described world, but with dull characters. And up to the two-thirds point, that was almost enough. Up to that point, the book moved briskly, the ideas were fascinating and the science somewhat believable.
At the two-thirds mark however, a character was brought in to provide a pseudoscience explanation on how there were so many modified lymphocytes (trillions) that they were warping space-time by looking at it too hard (really). This is a silly plot device that ignores basic science and seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the observer effect in quantum physics. That would have been fine in a book supported by interesting characters. Unfortunately, this book relies on descriptions of plausible science to carry it, so without that it falls apart a bit.