The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Zenith Angle was disappointing. I ignored other reviews that said as much because I’m a fan of Bruce Sterling’s work. Ah, well.
The ingredients of a good Sterling novel are here, but he over-seasoned the dish. Perhaps in an attempt at satire, he essentially turned his novel into a long rant on the state of security (specifically cyber-security) in the post-September 11th world. And it gets tiresome.
You follow his hero, Derek Vandeveer, on his odyssey from the world of the dot-com into the world of bureaucracy. The plot, when it emerges, seems to come from nowhere. There’s nothing organic about the transition from cyber-warfare to space-warfare.
Worse than that, his characters are not believable, and his dialogue–which is usually serviceable–is terrible.
What more can I say? I’m hoping the next one will be better. The Caryatids is already queued up for Kindle download.