Acts of Conscience eBook William Barton
Download As PDF : Acts of Conscience eBook William Barton 
New low price for this edition!
This is the story of Gaetan du Cheyne, Class 10 Spatial Machinery Mechanic at the great spaceship refit station known as Stardock. Gaetan du Cheyne. No mother, no father, no children, no wife, no friends, no home, no nothing. Just a job. A empty man, a hollow man, paid well enough for his complex skills that, when he's not consuming a steady diet of net porn, he gets to play the stock market. Until, one fine day, he finds himself in possession of a prototype FTL starship, and goes out among the worlds in search of... something. Anything. Maybe only the lost, empty dreams that were all he had as a child, dreams that deserted him as an adult. What he finds, in the end, if you can understand the man, if you can understand his lost dreams, may change you forever, if you're lucky.
Acts of Conscience eBook William Barton
I just finished this book and WOW. What can I say? It was amazing.This author writes with a lot of honesty. The characters he creates - even the AI - seems so real. Some people seem taken aback by the sex in William Barton's books, including this one. It didn't bother me at all however, because again, it was all very authentic.
This author succeeds in getting you to think about things you haven't thought about before. The story introduces moral dilemmas that human beings have not yet faced, but could well face. He raises strange and unusual scenarios involving other sentient races. What would our relationship to them be, exactly? Would we even recognize alien intelligence if we found it? Would we exploit an alien world? Or would human capitalism still win over all? He also raises unsettling questions about human sexuality. Again, nothing outside the realm of possibility. But if you are an avid science fiction reader, you will definitely find something new here.
The technology used here is believable, but never overpowers the story, which is a very human story. You get drawn right in to the world of Gaetan, and it just keeps on moving along. This story isn't characterized by action or fighting. The tension comes from the disquieting feeling of seeing something that you know is wrong, but not wanting to do anything about it because inside, you don't really believe that you can make a difference.
To me, the theme of "Acts of Conscience" is something that all human beings can relate to and is hopefully something that all have struggled with at one time or another. The story raises a lot of ugly thoughts about the environment, without ever being preachy in any way. And yes it is at times violent, but aren't humans violent? The story takes no pleasure in violence for violence's sake. It just presents the fact. It's up to the hero - and the reader - to judge.
I enjoyed this book a lot. I have also read "When Heaven Fell" by the same author. Both books have somewhat similar themes. But I liked "Acts of Conscience" better because I felt that the hero was more relatable. Without giving anything away, both books also have similar endings, which felt a little abrupt. I suppose if I had anything to complain about this book, it would be that it was over too soon. I wanted it to continue. But that's more a compliment to the author than anything else.
Highly recommended! I can't wait to read more of William Barton's work.
Product details
|
Tags : Acts of Conscience - Kindle edition by William Barton. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Acts of Conscience.,ebook,William Barton,Acts of Conscience,William Barton Enterprises,FICTION Science Fiction Action & Adventure,FICTION Science Fiction Hard Science Fiction
People also read other books :
- Silent Voice Yaoi Manga eBook Atsuki Kyoyama
- A touch of color A Coloring Book for Adults Featuring Mandala Flowers Ocean Life Paisley and Animal Design Avanti Digital Art 9780997394801 Books
- Schooling the Viscount Cotswold Confidential Book 1 edition by Maggie Robinson Literature Fiction eBooks
- Assault with Intent The Father Koesler Mysteries Book 4 edition by William Kienzle Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
- Rhyme and Reason Thoughts of Life and Love Larry E Bridgham Books
Acts of Conscience eBook William Barton Reviews
This is one of those rare books capable of changing your perspective on yourself and the world. I've written two other reviews on prior versions of this book, only to have them vanish into the cloud, so I'm not going to waste time going into depth in this one, other than to say that this was the first Barton novel I read, and it inspired me to go out and find and read everything else he has written.
Gaetan du Cheyne is a bit of a loser. A mechanic on starships, he's no randier than many a male, but he can't keep any of his many lovers. In fact, apart from the artificial intelligences inhabiting his spacesuit and work tools, he doesn't have any friends. But he does have a bit of luck when corporate intrigue and technological progress put one of the first faster than light starships in his possession.
He heads out to the colony world of his childhood dreams, Green Heaven. And there he finds a world of great beauty, women he wants to bed, his first friend, and aliens being hunted to extinction and exploited in other ways.
That the threatened aliens turn out to be sentient will come as no surprise given that the book is dedicated to H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy series which dealt with the same topic. The theme of exploitation, especially of a sexual nature, is something of specialty with Barton, so we get the dollies - little "cowgirl" aliens who look like small, velvet covered women, their pheromones and anatomy making them irresistible sexual toys for men. And it is this race, enmeshed in a terrible relationship with another sentient race on Green Heaven, and Gaetan's feelings about it, which are the moral pivots of this novel. Gaetan's alien friend, a rogue member of a race capable of a telepathic-like rapport with other life - including the ones they literally suck the life juices out of, turns out to have secret.
As above, so below. Gaetan's struggle to find the ethics of what to do for the sentients exploited by man turn out to be mirrored, in the novel's last quarter, by others considering man's fate.
Barton has been described as an author of nihilistic space opera. There is certainly, with vast interstellar wars, credible physics jargon, and superweapons aplenty, space opera here. And there is nihilism of a sort in that nothing is forever, all effort and accomplishment is doomed, all sentient life is ensnared by history and biology in a tragedy. But there is no ethical nihilism in that the novel calls for moral choices, acts of conscience.
Barton leaves a lot of external plot elements unresolved at story's end, but the novel isn't about outcomes. It's about whether one flawed man, Gaetan, is going to make a choice and what that choice will be.
I'm usually a big fan of Barton's, but this book just didn't catch me. His characters are usually dark and unlikable, but compelling and very interesting. I think a lot of other people might like this book, but it just didn't resonate with me for some reason.
This is a remarkably *intense* book. Barton says many readers think it's his best. It's about primitive native sentients on Green Heaven, a colony world, and about technological aliens out in the larger universe. And it's a big universe, with deep roots
The StruldBugs. The Adversary Instrumentality. The Shock War, four hundred million years ago. "I have no recollection, " the Kapellmeister said. “There has been a great and rancorous debate among my kind about what is appropriate information for release to your kind. The general consensus is that we wish you hadn’t come. We’ve been content, sitting home, these last four hundred million years.”
The protagonist is a starship mechanic, a moral, over-sexed and conflicted man. Through a fortunate stock speculation, he's bought a private FTL starship. As in a lot of Barton's work, there's more distasteful sexuality than I cared for, but well-worth putting up with for the rewards. A great and underrated novel. 4.5 stars.
I just finished this book and WOW. What can I say? It was amazing.
This author writes with a lot of honesty. The characters he creates - even the AI - seems so real. Some people seem taken aback by the sex in William Barton's books, including this one. It didn't bother me at all however, because again, it was all very authentic.
This author succeeds in getting you to think about things you haven't thought about before. The story introduces moral dilemmas that human beings have not yet faced, but could well face. He raises strange and unusual scenarios involving other sentient races. What would our relationship to them be, exactly? Would we even recognize alien intelligence if we found it? Would we exploit an alien world? Or would human capitalism still win over all? He also raises unsettling questions about human sexuality. Again, nothing outside the realm of possibility. But if you are an avid science fiction reader, you will definitely find something new here.
The technology used here is believable, but never overpowers the story, which is a very human story. You get drawn right in to the world of Gaetan, and it just keeps on moving along. This story isn't characterized by action or fighting. The tension comes from the disquieting feeling of seeing something that you know is wrong, but not wanting to do anything about it because inside, you don't really believe that you can make a difference.
To me, the theme of "Acts of Conscience" is something that all human beings can relate to and is hopefully something that all have struggled with at one time or another. The story raises a lot of ugly thoughts about the environment, without ever being preachy in any way. And yes it is at times violent, but aren't humans violent? The story takes no pleasure in violence for violence's sake. It just presents the fact. It's up to the hero - and the reader - to judge.
I enjoyed this book a lot. I have also read "When Heaven Fell" by the same author. Both books have somewhat similar themes. But I liked "Acts of Conscience" better because I felt that the hero was more relatable. Without giving anything away, both books also have similar endings, which felt a little abrupt. I suppose if I had anything to complain about this book, it would be that it was over too soon. I wanted it to continue. But that's more a compliment to the author than anything else.
Highly recommended! I can't wait to read more of William Barton's work.
0 Response to "[H0C]⋙ Descargar Acts of Conscience eBook William Barton"
Post a Comment