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3.0 out of 5 stars
Fun, but not on Par with his other books, Dec 11 2001
Set four hundred years in the future, when a large part of humanity has moved into space, Tranquility Wars is a sci-fi/adventure story. Not much of the story can be told with out taking away part of the fun of the book. But the basic idea can be told. The main character is Hunter Blake, a 20 year old who lives with his parents on an asteroid in our solar system. Out side the asteroid, the solar system is split between two governments. The first controls the south side of Mars, and every thing within Marsï¿ orbit, including Earthï¿s moon. The second controls the north half of Mars, and everything outside of Marsï¿ orbit, including the asteroid that is home to the Blake family. The book follows Hunter on his first trip to Mars, to become one of a few selected government scholars. The book does a good job of describing some of the problems of living in space, and how they could be dealt with, along with creating a vivid and complex political system.While the book is a fun read, in general the story is lacking that which turns a fun read into a good book. As stated before, the book follows Hunter on his trip, and while we see him make a few choices, the key decision are made for him. But the reader is still given pages of inner thought on key issues, ranging from how far science should go, to how much control the government should have. But these segments on key issues feel forced, and donï¿t fit with the charactersï¿ other traits, almost as if Gentry Lee was trying to address key topics with a story along side. (In his other books, he wrote a good story that had important topics on the side.) There were also several cases of irrelevant side stories, that neither advanced the plot (as they suggested during the reading), nor helped develop the characters. This proved frustrating, as some of the suggested plot developments were more interesting than what really happened. Overall this book was fun to read, but not worth a great deal of praise. And it is most definitely not at the same level as the Rama series or the Bright Messengers story.
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