Rainbows End

One of my favorite things about Audible, are the surprises you find if willing to take a chance on mixed reviews.

This has been the best treat so far. My thanks to the readers who didn’t get it.

Having never even heard of Vinge, I was totally captivated by his near future extension of present day trends, and, the new tech he invents.

Story line and world view worked well together, no excessive fluff explaining concepts, but enough back story to keep everything together.

This is now one of my top 5 books, I just hope this glowing review doesn’t spoil it for a future treasure hunter.

I was really excited at the beginning of this story. But by part 2 I was bored out of my brain. I know it's an award-winning novel, but for me there's far too much unnecessary dialogue and too few scene changes. It just doesn't move quickly enough for me. I gave up partway through part 2.

While not the most compulsive of narratives, “Rainbows End” will nevertheless be of great interest to hardcore fans of speculative fiction. Treading similar ground to Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge’s story set in the very near future pulses with ideas and possibility, yet lacks the formers wit and verve.
The story revolves around the central character of Robert Gu, Nobel prize winning poet, lost in the depths of Alzheimer’s. Of the three main narrative threads this is the strongest, and could have functioned as a novel on its own. Gu’s story is one of redemption, beautifully expressed, and worth the listeners effort. Of the other two threads, namely an earth shaking conspiracy and persona called “Rabbit”, I was ambivalent and found them to be hard work. Having said that, the unexplained “Rabbit” remained with me for several days, and after some reflection I wonder if the author was expressing something regarding the evolution of technology; aka Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s “Noosphere” .
The narration was of a high standard and I could not but help think that the character of Robert Gu sounded just like the voice of the actor Jason Robarts.

A fantastic listen, full of great characters and ideas. If you like Neal Stephenson, William Gibson or Greg Bear (just to name a few) you will enjoy this book. Considered a post-cyberpunk masterpiece.

The story is well written sci-fi that creates a near future reality that is easily believable and understandable. Within this setting you have the story of a gifted but difficult man, given a second chance to live. There is always a catch of course, in this case in comes in the form of a rabbit who is trying to save the world, end the world or possibly just looking for some fun. All in all, I highly recommend the audio book. If yoiu like sci-fi.. I think you'll enjoy it. I did.

While those not used to traditional Science Fiction may find this read a little dense, it is SCIENCE Fiction. Based in a cyber mapped future, where practically everyone wears interfaces to the internet in their clothing, and information technology is used for good and evil, this story remains, at its heart, human. There is a reason this master crafted story won the Hugo- and that is because Vinge seems to not only understand the classic conflict of man vs machine, but he also realizes and typifies how much we love, hate and depend on being plugged in.

This is about a world, not too far into the future, where technology is everywhere, viruses and consumer manipulation is on the order of the day and one's life is intimately entwined with virtual realities.

The book's strength is that it builds on today's video and internet games and extends it into the future to create a real/virtual world that you could well imagine could actually come about.

But this is the book's ultimate weakness as well. It ends up reading too much like a video game. Nothing seems real and the story ends up sounding like a juvenile virtual dream.

The premise is fascinating and the author devotes a great deal of time and energy to imagining how advances in computer technology might influence society. So much that he seems to have neglected fundamentals of a good story like plot, character development, etc. For all its imagination the story felt flat to me. The characters were wooden undeveloped stereotypes, exposition of the technology dragged the storyline down, all this overlaying a conventional, unoriginal plot.

Also, Vinge has made the classic sci-fi mistake of overestimating the pace of technological development. The story seems to take place in the early 2030's, but much of the technology that forms the backbone of the story, particularly in the field of human regeneration, seems to have advanced much further than could be expected in a few decades.

This author has put enough thought into his work that I enjoyed it the first time and immediately started again from the beginning. His world is a complex and believable concept of the near future. He has woven estimated psychological, physical and technological extrapolations from the present into the future and used them as the backdrop for an end of the world type crisis. The story line is entertaining but one can lose oneself in his vision of the everyday lives of our grandchildren.

Believable technology and an interesting main character. The vibe and energy reminded me of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, so if you liked that, you'll probably like this book as well. "The Rabbit" character that emerges could have come from William Gibson, and I'm hoping for a sequel featuring it.