Take Back the Sky (War Dogs, #3)

by Greg Bear

The conclusion to an epic interstellar trilogy of war from master of science fiction, Greg Bear.

Marooned beneath the icy, waxy crust of Saturn's moon, Titan, Skyrine Michael Venn and his comrades face double danger from Earth and from the Antagonists, both intent on wiping out their growing awareness of what the helpful alien Gurus are really doing in our solar system.

Haunted by their dead and by the ancient archives of our Bug ancestors, the former combatants must now team up with their enemies, forget their indoctrination and their training, and journey far beyond Pluto to the fabled Planet X, the Antagonists' home world, a Sun-Planet in the comet-generating Kuiper belt. It's here that Master Sergeant Venn will finally understand his destiny and the destiny of every intelligent being in the solar system-including the enigmatic Gurus.

• ISBN10: 0316223972
• ISBN13: 9780316223973
• Publish Date: 20 December 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 296
• Language: English

Reviews

[Metaphorosis Reviews]

2 stars - Metaphorosis Reviews

The conclusion of a trilogy. A hard-bitten marine, with an accidental telepathic link to both humanity's enemies (the Antagonists) and to the data libraries of a long-dead alien race, travels across the solar system to try and defeat the race that secretly controls both humans and Antagonists.

I've read some of Greg Bear's work before, decades ago (e.g., Eon). I didn't care for it much. I'm sorry to say that neither age nor experience has increased my enjoyment. I wish I could blame it on coming in at the end of the trilogy, but in fact the backstory was fairly clear; Bear does a good job of bringing us up to date without infodumps. It's the rest of the book I had trouble with. The prose is choppy, seemingly in an attempt to illustrate natural dialogue, but the fact is that people don't talk like this most of the time. The plot points are fairly arbitrary; even allowing for the complexity of the backdrop, very little of what happens makes much sense. Even the book's major quest element - a long voyage - ends up having little purpose, and then the book ends in an inconsequential rush.

If you loved the first books of the trilogy, or you're one of the fans who have brought Bear his continued success, I assume you'll like this too. If you're new to Bear or the trilogy, I can't recommend this; it's just not a good book.