Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Book review: RedRobe by Jon Courtney Grimwood

Set in a future where refugees have become such a problem they’ve made a special planet for them. Its a nicely balanced book, with nanotech available but only a few things are computationally powerful enough to deal with the complexities of it, meaning much of the setting is relatively lowtech against a background of high potential.

In many ways its like the Straylight run, but in a world of more, and better thought out, contradictions. A world where the Catholic Church is a powerful commercial force and Mexico is the economic centre of the world.

Slower going that Gibson, but worth the extra time.


5 comments

      • :) Red Robe is technically third in a cycle, least the third book in st same shared world. They recently republished, um, lusifers dragon?, in the same dress as RedRobe and ReMix. Remix rocks, though perhaps not as much as RedRobe.

        His later set of three books that are rather arab based takes Effingers pulpy ideas and makes a set of novels instead, though the three books are much more a set of three books, which in lititure terms rather devalues the, i guess.

        • That kind of continuity is good, I dislike sequelling though, a book should be able to stand alone. I’d not realised it was part of a set, I did notice others with a similar style of cover so I assumed they were somehow related, but took that only to be author-related.

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