For approximately the first 80% of this book, it is a thriller set in Afghanistan/Iran with a CIA agent on a mission. There is one surprise, namely a cruise missile takes out a target and nobody can see the missile. Then suddenly, we see the nature of the missile and the book changes to science fiction. The missile is covered with small objects that give it the invisibiity cloak. I immediately thought the author had used physics similar to what I used in my First Contact trilogy, but no, Hayes had read enough science to have a different mechanism. That impressed me.
The blurb says the CIA agent must save the world, and to this point that seems a ridiculous stretch, but now the story lurches into a means of sending our agent to the fuuture, where he sees what has gone wrong, and he has the ability to return and fix it. It is one of the very few times I have ever seen a blurb such as this actually live up to its text.
I have an interest in classical history, and Justinian is an unusual representative. He almost recovered the Roman empire, but for some bad luck in the form of bubonic plague taking out much of his army and economy. But the story is also very informative, and looks into the question of governance as it is influenced by the personality of those in power.
A definitive new biography of the Byzantine emperor Justinian
Justinian is a radical reassessment of an emperor and his times. In the sixth century CE, the emperor Justinian presided over nearly four decades of remarkable change, in an era of geopolitical threats, climate change, and plague. From the eastern Roman—or Byzantine—capital of Constantinople, Justinian’s armies reconquered lost territory in Africa, Italy, and Spain. But these military exploits, historian Peter Sarris shows, were just one part of a larger program of imperial renewal. From his dramatic overhaul of Roman law, to his lavish building projects, to his fierce persecution of dissenters…
The book is somewhat flawed and many of the critics have focused on them, BUT I found the basic premise that some alien "has turned off the sun" so out of the world (literally!) that I have to forgive much of the rest.
The middle of the book is criticised for people having endless meetings trying to work out what to do, but let's accept that with such an event, what else would happen? There is almost nothing you can do in the time available before the planet loses all its heat. So I found reading about how people might behave in such an improbable scenario worth reading. The criticism of too much telling is ridiculous – what else would you expect? What would you expect to show when everyone is stuck in rooms desperately trying to conserve heat?
What would happen to the world if the sun went out?
New epic sci-fi from Stephen Baxter, the award-winning author whose credits include co-authorship of the Long Earth series with Terry Pratchett.
By the middle of the 21st century, humanity has managed to overcome a series of catastrophic events and maintain some sense of stability. Space exploration has begun again. Science has led the way.
But then one day, the sun goes out. Solar panels are useless, and the world begins to freeze
Schools in the early 22nd century teach that the big corporations provide all necessary services solely for the betterment of society, under the benevolent guidance of the Federation Council.
When Fiona Bolton, an expert in sonic viewing, watches her husband being murdered while uncovering corporate malfeasance, she wants justice. Instead, she is dragged into the dark side of corporate behaviour.
Jonathon Munro so wants to be important in a corporation, but his only talent seems to lie within that dark side. Sharon Galloway has developed the most advanced excavating device known, and she hates and despises Jonathon Munro. Then, when Grigori Timoshenko decides to form an expedition to settle for once and for all whether the morphing image of a battered butte in the Cydonian Mensae region of Mars was due to alien activity, these three must be included in the party. With hidden agendas and attempts at murder on a planet with no air, the gloss of visiting another planet soon wears thin.
