Spin Control by Chris Moriarty

From The Week of June 27, 2010

Though Spin State was an exciting entrant into the genre of dark science fiction, its followup leaves a lot to be desired. Ms. Moriarty's future Earth is interesting and novel, and the intrigues are just as mind-bendingly intricate, but the characters all come out too flat for my liking.

Spin Control shifts the action from the hinterlands of Compson's World to humanity's capital, Earth, where the shining jewel of the past is no more. The climate is nearing total collapse and anyone who is anyone has left for less polluted horizons, leaving behind the embittered and the penniless. Though Catherine Li, the antihero from the first novel, appears as a player here, our protagonist is a young and naive syndicate, or genetic clone, who has been sent to Earth on a mission to sell a powerful weapon to interested parties. Though the novel is, in the main, taken up with the various factions pitching the clone on why they should be the weapon's recipient, these machinations are less interesting than the background against which they play out, a renewed conflict between Palestine and Israel. No, not even the passage of 500 years has solved for that festering wound. The only difference between now and then lies in the sophistication of the weapons which are so powerful, so complicated, that humans can no longer operate them. They leave that to artificial intelligences who comandeer human volunteers on both sides of the conflict to use them as soldier puppets for its various attacks and retreats.

All the ingredients are here for a thriller just as good as the one which gave it birth. But though the novelty of 26th century Israel still at war is interesting, and while Ms. Moriarty never fails to entertain with her loops inside of loops, it just doesn't animate like it should. Too many tortured souls; too much sociology; too much angst. It may be that this book caught me in a bad mood, but Cohen, the AI attached to Catherine Li, gets an inordinate amount of P.O.V. Time for a lovesick sop who is only a fraction as interesting as his author seems to think he is. Disappointing, but I'll cherish the first novel and hope that, in the event of a third, matters take a turn back for the better. (2/5 Stars)