What do You think about The Zenith Angle (2005)?
So maaaaaybe this is operating at some high level of irony. I can sort of see it in hindsight: Van's overwrought behavior and speechifying and take-so-seriously business at what is barely a first world problem of "cyberwar" and so forth. And I can see angles where the book peels away the veneer of Government work to show the overcomplicated bureaucracy, all politically-driven and working-at-cross-purposes.And I can see messages about ideal technical solutions and situations--the Ivory Tower--being sullied by quotidian battles and give-and-take politics and hucksterism.And even the irony of making a big name for yourself by screwing up.But the thing is: the characters, especially Van, are completely odious, and this book fails to give me anything to think about. It's criminal that this is a Bruce Sterling novel and there's nothing particularly visionary about it.It's a story about the grunge of computer security, filtered through Tom Clancy. Or am I missing something here?
—Derek
The book is about a computer scientist that does a lot of angsty thinking about how his precious interwebs are all under attack from cyber terrorists - and only one "intruder" was mentioned after 200 pages. The story does pick up quite a bit towards the end, but the ending felt goofy - as if the author realized, "Oh dang...I need to make this story come together now." I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to feel unfulfilled after reading it. Or, to anyone that liked "The DaVinci Code".
—Lee
Now that escalated quickly.. About 40 minutes before I finished the book I formulated in my head "good writing, but it seems to lack a bigger story arc" I couldn't have been wrong more. In the last chapters the author manages to tie it all together, add a twist and make sense of it all. Well done. So why am I only giving 4 out of 5 stars? Mostly because some of the minor details don't make sense, like that gag about using spam for the laser, or shooting someone with a hot glue gun. In some way it seems that Mr. Sterling added those small wrong details as some hidden "funnies", something that I found rather annoying in an otherwise great book. One more thing: a hacker who works in cyber warfare for any government is not a white hat. Granted he was described as such before he did so on the book, and not after, but.. It kinda feels like it needs saying. Doing secret government work in warfare is mutually exclusive to following hacker ethics.
—Peter Petermann
