eBook, 849 KB
Published June 11th 2011
ASIN: B0055LMKG6
Source: Author, for the purposes of an honest review
Genre: Sci-Fi (cyber)
Series: The Bridge Chronicles #1-3
Stars: 4
The Bridge Chronicles is
insanely different from anything I typically read. This is 100% sci-fi that takes
place in a vastly different future with a technologically advanced cyber world
known as the GlobalNet. People enter the NetRooms using a NetBody. The world is
a bleak America where there has been a complete failure of the government and
now a localized governing system that is owned by money hungry corporations has
filled in the gaps and their making the laws, collecting the taxes and policing
the streets. Readers are given a world that takes place both in a real world
and a cyber-world.
Artemis Bridge is not a man you like nor one you would call
friend. He is however a man you want to know and have his services available to
you if you were to need something that is not easily or legally acquired. You
see Bridge knows a man, actually he knows lots of mans. He is your bridge to that
individual. He doesn’t ask questions nor does he want any details on his
customers wants. He just collects a fee and bridges the gap. I loved this anti-hero.
His scruples are all out of whack. He helps people get what they want, he keeps
his coffers filled, he keeps his a vast know network, all while on occasion helping
someone, but never for the good of others, always for himself first. Thus
Bridge assisting someone is a byproduct of him looking out for only himself. I
loved this about the main character.
The secondary characters are just as interesting. Readers
are given a political science studying footballer who can no longer play the
sport turned muscle for hire, turned ganger, turned gang leader, along with a
highly intelligent philosophical body guard, the god of all GlobalNet hackers
and technomancers which are in essence scientists with a highly secretive
technology that allows them to manipulate everything and just simply label it
as magic.
I liked the author’s commentary. In between the books and
the short stories he explains how Bridge came to be a character, how the book
grew from serial blog posts to books and the book of all the books. He also
goes into some detail about just how detrimentally bad a governing body owned
by corporations would be. Sometimes when I read a book I find myself thinking
about what was the author thinking. Ballard has taken the time and put some of
his thoughts into this book. I really enjoyed that feature of The Bridge Chronicles.
As a whole book, The
Bridge Chronicles is great. The reader gets three novellas: Under the Amoral Bridge, The Know Circuit, and if [tribe] = and two short stories The Feed Autonomy, and Elegant Solutions to Complex Hostility.
All of this is bundled into one book that includes the author’s personal
thoughts. The three books total to 552 pages, with the added short stories and
authors thoughts this is easily a 600 page book.
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