A review by jameseckman
The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred by Greg Egan

2.0

I can't make up my mind if this should have been trimmed into a short or made into a novel. The basic premise, people of one family are taxed for their ancestry and resist is a good one and the first half would have made a good short. It falls apart in the second half when the lowly port director is the only one negotiating with a warship over very short period of time when the potential confrontation had been known for over a month. The results seemed forced and the ending seemed nonsensical. Needs some more time on the book tree or an axe is needed to wack off the last half.