Legacy (Paperback)

The story of Olmy started out in a very good way, in a nice hard-style sci-fi environment that started to grab my imagination. But that changed once he came to Lamarckia via the Way. After that, I could have been reading a sappy hard-life novel of some people in some jungle somewhere, with a major sea travel thrown in. I didn't care about the secondary characters in the story, I didn't care about the had times on board a sailboat, and I didn't care about the large plant-like creature, who was the only interesting point about the story apart from the Way and the technological environment from where the story began.
Through the entire book I was expecting some sort of discovery of some sort of large-scale ecologic intelligence, (like Jerry Pournelle's STARSWARM) but there's no payoffs for all of your determined reading. Things are vaguely explained, hinted at, and in the end I realized that there was just no substance to the mystetries that Mr. Bear tried to hook me with.

Here's a paraphrase of the entire book:

Some guy from a very interesting place goes on a vague mission of discovery to a very wierd place. There, he becomes part of the hard-knock life. Eventually he falls in love with a girl because she's "simple" while working as a deck-hand on a sailing ship. while sailing they see wierd things and suffer more hardships. Then a war happens with small numbers of people using primitive cannons and other weapons, then he's rescued somehow and is back in the interesting place talking about his experience.

The story of Olmy started out in a very good way, in a nice hard-style sci-fi environment that started to grab my imagination. But that changed once he came to Lamarckia via the Way. After that, I could have been reading a sappy hard-life novel of some people in some jungle somewhere, with a major sea travel thrown in. I didn't care about the secondary characters in the story, I didn't care about the had times on board a sailboat, and I didn't care about the large plant-like creature, who was the only interesting point about the story apart from the Way and the technological environment from where the story began.

Through the entire book I was expecting some sort of discovery of some sort of large-scale ecologic intelligence, (like Jerry Pournelle's STARSWARM) but there's no payoffs for all of your determined reading. Things are vaguely explained, hinted at, and in the end I realized that there was just no substance to the mystetries that Mr. Bear tried to hook me with.

Here's a paraphrase of the entire book:

Some guy from a very interesting place goes on a vague mission of discovery to a very wierd place. There, he becomes part of the hard-knock life. Eventually he falls in love with a girl because she's "simple" while working as a deck-hand on a sailing ship. while sailing they see wierd things and suffer more hardships. Then a war happens with small numbers of people using primitive cannons and other weapons, then he's rescued somehow and is back in the interesting place talking about his experience.