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A review by mpetruce
Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen
4.0
I almost gave up on this book. It just started slow for me and then, somewhere around 150 or 200 pages in, what a blast! Don't know why; maybe I took a while to get used to the world McMullen has created. Good post-apocalyptic sci-fi without the depressing edge that seems to pervade that genre. \
I always loved the idea about a society governed by a library, or rather, a Library and fancied some day writing a story about that myself. McMullen beat me to it and did a better job than I ever could. And this one is nice and edgy morally, but naive technologically, combining steampunk, windpunk, ethanol-punk, woodpunk, you name it. Skips ahead in time a lot, especially in the point where the originally published as two novels story breaks. Lots of humor, some action and, like a lot of good sci-fi, dirty (without being porny).
I always loved the idea about a society governed by a library, or rather, a Library and fancied some day writing a story about that myself. McMullen beat me to it and did a better job than I ever could. And this one is nice and edgy morally, but naive technologically, combining steampunk, windpunk, ethanol-punk, woodpunk, you name it. Skips ahead in time a lot, especially in the point where the originally published as two novels story breaks. Lots of humor, some action and, like a lot of good sci-fi, dirty (without being porny).