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Zima (2011)

by Rod Rees(Favorite Author)

3.53 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Jota

series

The Demi-Monde Saga

review 1: The Demi-Monde is a holodeck style cyberpace generated by a quantum computer with almost unlimited processing power that was built to train US forces in asymmetric urban warfare. It was designed to be indistinguishable from reality because that's the only way the terror of such environments could be conveyed. To realistically simulate the warlords of such environments, personalities of history's most infamous charismatic sociopaths, psychotics, and fantatics are simulated with perfect accuracy. What could go wrong?The world is a disk shaped, cramped, weirdly fantastical milieu that is sort like steampunk meets the Wiemar republic combined into the impossible, arbitrary fixtures of a video game world that is taken to be absolute reality by its inhabitants.I love books with ... moremaps and glossaries of terminology in the back. The glossary of this book, an encyclopedia Demi-Mondia of portmanteaus, acronyms, and neologisms, is as much fun as the text, because it is the world building in this book that makes it good. The writing is serviceable, clear, and it has a good granularity of detail so that you can enjoy your tour of the Demi-Monde through a fast paced pulp magazine style adventure with cliff hangers galore. Characterization and plot often falter, but the book is enough fun that its forgivable.
review 2: I got this book as a free read from Amazon, not looking much beyond the little blurb. Then I started reading it. HOLY CRAP. This is a book about what happens in an artificial world where conditions are artificially created to cause strife between groups of people and highly motivated evil leaders are thrown into the mix to drive that strife to warfare--all so real world soldiers can learn to fight in the kinds of wars we have now. There were things that were hard about it--the language of oppression in it regarding racism and anti-Semetism and sexism are hard to read. Harder for a black reader, I'd think. I know the Jewish stuff made me a little sick. That said, it's UTTERLY appropriate and handled deftly. I just wouldn't want anyone to stumble over that imagery unawares.That said, the Demi-Monde is a fascinating universe that sets up some serious questions about why we hate, what power does, how our prejudices limit us. The writing is solid, characterizations deft and convincing, and the plot is so gripping that when this book ended on a cliffhanger, I gasped out loud and paged back on my Kindle, heartbroken it was really over. less

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