Final Days

Hmmm...tricky one, this. I tried to like it, honest, but the alleged intricate plot, compelling characters and superbly imagined alien civilisation were nowhere to be seen. What I saw was a plot predicated on a very esoteric bit of physics (time travel via FTL wormholes), sloppy grammar, an over abundance of shallow, disposable characters and a disappointing linear and unfulfilling plot. Think Tom Clancy does the script for a Stargate game and you won't be too far from the truth. I had hoped, all the way through, that there would be some overarching conspiracy to add some meat to the paltry plot but it never happened. You are left with loose ends flapping about all over the place and an overall impression of `why?'; what was the point of the story but mostly why have I just spent several weeks of bed-time reads struggling to enjoy this?

I received this book through Goodreads' First Reads program and am glad I did. I usually stick to authors I've already read or have come recommended from friends.
Many other reviewers have described the writing as similar to Greg Bear, and I agree. I don't know if I would have made that connection myself, but I certainly see where the focus on some central semi-plausible Sci-Fi idea is the driving force in the story (similar to how Bear works).
The idea of using wormholes to not only travel to distant stars but also distant times is imaginative and original. I enjoyed the setting and layout of the story. I didn't want to know too much more about the colonies because the focus of this story was about the Earth and losing it. The ending was real to me because it provides the same information to the reader that the main protagonist would have, there is still mystery in what has happened and what will happen.
The main protagonist is a government agent, so there is the usual intrigue and shoot-outs one would expect from a story revolving around that character type. There is still plenty of science through his discoveries and other character viewpoints for readers who are looking for hard sci-fi.
I enjoyed this book as a good sci-fi action adventure story.

I'll let others critique the story and or characters of this book. My problem is that Gary's philosophy of worm holes and space travel is complete junk.

Some of this may come off as a bit of a spoiler but really I'm not going to reference anything that isn't strongly foreshadowed in the first chapter. So here are just 2 examples of what I'm talking about.

1. At the beginning of the book you are told that a worm hole that connected earth to another planet has collapsed and a second worm hole is on a slower than light spaceship that is now 9 and some odd years into its 10 year journey to reestablish contact. But the planet is 100 lightyears away from earth( the book says more than a hundred light years so I round down to an even hundred). If it takes the ship 10 years to cross 100 lightyears then the ship most be traveling at 10× the speed of light. How can something this simple have been missed by anyone!!
2. Gary is using the theory of worm holes as described by Relativity which says that as you travel through space you also travel through time. So in this universe of Gary's if you take one end of a worm hole and travel X distance with it then you can pass through the wormhole in a shorter amount of time than it took travel X distance and in that way travel forward in time.
But when that worm hole, that's traveling in a ship moving at 10× the speed of light, arrives at its intended planet and one of the characters passes through it ten years have passed both on earth and that planet. So 10 years passed on Earth wile it took 10 years for the ship to cross space, and when we arrive on the planet ,100 lightyears away, only ten years have passed for them as well. So where's the time travel Gary?
Even if the affect of time vs space was a 1to1 ratio, one lightyear traveled = one year forward in time, then 100 lightyears would equal 100 years in the future. All of this is explained in the first chapter of the book as we are introduced to some people that have traveled in a wormhole taking them so far into the future that the stars have burned out.

Seriously theses are just 2 problems that show up in the first chapter! That's not even getting into the argument about determinism vs probability and the effect of free will or the gross misinterpretation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principal. Honestly I would not recommend this book to anyone that enjoys science in they're sci-fi.

But hey if you don't mind this kind of thing and are looking for an atypical action adventure then this is a fine book for you. Because I'll give Gary Gibson this, the end of the book is freshly different and gives the reader a heady experience wile they try to figure out exactly what has really happened. I just wish it hadn't left me so pissed off about the science.

Not as good as his Shoal trilogy or his first book Angel Stations. But still some interesting -- and at times, exciting -- science fiction that kept me reading. I have ordered the second book.