It is the near future and we have arrived at/discovered/created/evolved (however you say it) the Singulatiry, the conscious, non-biological intelligence calle the Eschaton that mere humans can but hope to comprehend. With its godlike powers, the Eschaton seems almost divine in nature.

But even a God has worries and in this case it's a version of faster than light travel that effectively becomes time travel (through a slight of hand reliance on the Heisenberg "observation" experiment). For if time travel is possible, then someone can go to the distant past and set in motion events to destroy the Eschaton. Therefore, that entity has established some basic game rules - Thou Shalt Not Violate Causality in the Past. The consequences for such an action range from technological changes to expulsion to planetary destruction.

In SINGULARITY we meet Martin, secret agent for the Eschaton, and Rachel, UN Black Op spy who fall in love while seeking to prevent the destruction of the New Republic for violating the sacred law. This is an old-fashioned space opera with drama, romance, action and the incredible world of nanotechnology, genetic modification and smart materials. They save the planet and marry in time for the next adventure, IRON SUNRISE. This is such an incredible piece of writing - the story, the humor, the science and research are just amazing. My grade: A+

This book was lacking - in writing, in characterization, in development. It begins with an interesting idea - on a backwards world, telephones falling from the sky, promising anything you want in exchange for a story. The idea and the concept are great - of the Festival, a huge migrating collection of creatures & information, of the judges, of the culture shock.

Unfortunately, most of the action of the book was on a spaceship where not much happened. Too much technical jargon describing the engines of the ship, I really don't care about nuts and bolts of the inside of things! I love sf for the physics and the ideas, and this book lacked development and was ultimately not satisfying. On the planet where the Festival landed, things happened too quickly. We actually didn't get to see how people reacted to it all.

The ideas had potential, so it makes me think that Charles Stross simply didn't have the talent and writing abilities to deliver. On the other hand, of all his books, this one has the lowest rating on Amazon, so perhaps I'll give him another chance. I don't recommend this book. Read Alastair Reynold, Vernor Vinge, Stephen Baxter, or Chris Moriarty instead for good hard sf.

Stross writes with confidence and in fine style, but I was still left feeling empty. The problem with writing about technological singularity is that it's like trying to describe the Internet to an ant. Too far outside the frame of reference of even the author.

I enjoy novels where I feel something for the characters, whether it be affection, love or even loathing. These characters left me indifferent.

Having said all that, Stross has an eye for irony that gave me a few chuckles.

This is a great story on a grand scale. I looked forward to my reading sessions. The basis of the story that a super human AI has molded human existence is appropriate to our times since we are heading for the day when such machine intelligence might be built. If you like big stories you will probably like this book.

Generally speaking I do not look too hard at other reviews before writing my own. I will make an exception in this case and say that I am mildly astonished at the strength of some of the responses.

I really enjoyed the book. I am not a hard-core techie and I did not find the jargon too much or off-putting in any way. The tech is part of the general verisimilitude that speculative fiction needs as the price of admission.

As a matter of fact, the author this book most reminded me of was Clifford D. Simak (and you do not get more rural and character driven than Simak). This notion of the Singularity is one that he would have loved. It was as though Stross picked up A Choice of Gods and decided to flesh out the disappearance of The People. Rachel is also a character that Simak would have loved.

This said, the novel is not without flaws. Some of the later chapters about the Festival get lost in their own cleverness. I might have preferred a little bit less in the way of manic myth references and more in the way of focus on the story. I think that some of the problems that people had with the characters has to do with the fact that towards the end Stross seems to like the coolness of his own invention (the Festival) more than he really likes his readers. To be fair, the Festival is a really cool concept. But I missed Rachel and Martin in the last fifth of the book.

In short, Stross is an author I am really delighted to have discovered. I'm planning to pick up Iron Sunrise on my next bookshop run. Recommended for fans of more political speculative fiction.