Behemoth by Peter Watts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After the last book gave us a world above the ocean and the one before gave us the world below, I wondered just where this (duo/single?) third novel would take us.

Indeed, it gave us a synthesis. We had a treat of biology, more gene-modding, collapsing ecospheres, and even a bit of cooperation as the virus that had once been biological had become computational and had destroyed our modern world AND infected us biologically.

This is a true dystopian, no matter how you look at it, but it is also a wonderful combination of cyberpunk, biopunk, and military SF.

Military SF? Oh yeah, it went there this time. :)

Big time war. All those victim/victimizers out there finally found common ground and decided to team up or team-WITH the ancient big-bad. Totally cool.

I think it redeems a bit of the issue I had with the middle book by way of theme and analysis. It was also a bit more fast-paced and focused, less wandering. It had less discovery. I like discovery, of course, but with everything else that was going on, I really wanted to see some kind of cool resolution.

And we got it, here.

I totally recommend this SF series. Some people might prefer to have stopped at the first, but this entire cycle was well worth the effort.

Peter Watts is an absolute Must-Read for me. I won't quibble anymore. He's on my favorites list. :)

View all my reviews