Customer Reviews
Ignore the all the reviews posted by Americans 
2008-09-08
This is one hell of an entertaining and thought provoking book. Again, the book is almost entirely centred on a female character - one Freya Nakamachi - Baroque and Renaissance musician, professional concubine and kick-arse cybernetic dame! (you gotta be interested after a resumé like that!?) One of his best characters since Reeve in "Glasshouse" and Sue, the Lesbian Scottish cop in "Halting State".
The book is full of ideas and some challenging ones - like can we produce artificial intelligences similar to humans? Stross's answer is yes.
Don't read the reviews, especially all the crappy negatives ones, just buy it and enjoy a very good yarn!
I am kind of wondering if the people who made "Ghost In The Shell" might be interested in animating it. I think Charlie Stross would be down for it! Maybe someone could animate it and I could present the Renaissance and Baroque music for the soundtrack. Well, one day ....
Great stuff! Full marks to Charlie Stross!
PS: Buy the U.K. edition to avoid the cheese-cake cover.
I Don't See It! 
2008-09-07
I've liked some of other Stross's work quite a bit. I was excited about this one after reading reviews likening it to everything from Heinlein to Futurama. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I'm really disappointed. I've read close to all of Heinlein, and I don't see much of a connection. Other than in a very few places, I didn't find much humor either. If you like your SF very plot heavy, you'll likely love this book. I prefer more character exploration or even philosophical exploration (despite what I've read elsewhere, I experienced little of either here). There's nothing wrong with the novel, but it's not one I'm going to remember in a year or two.
A Confusing Journey Into the World of Femmebots 
2008-09-06
I thought this was going to be a wonderful book when I started it. Stross has quite an imagination for worlds unlike ours. He has created a world where humans are extinct and robots have colonized the galaxy because they don't have human biological restrictions. He has some really interesting ideas such interplanetary travel that starts with a giant ferris wheel that takes your pod into orbit where you're attached to something kind of like a ski lift that takes you to the next planet. He also has an interesting idea for a movable city that travels on railroad tracks across the face of Mercury to avoid the extreme hot and cold weather of each day as the planet turns.
I should have stopped reading after Mercury.
The main idea behind the story is that robots can experience the memories of their dead siblings by inserting their dead siblings' "soul chips" into themselves. Thus, your siblings' education, training, and memories can become your own. Unfortunately, this makes for confusing reading. The main character, Freya, switches between at least 6 identities. And other robots around her are switching identities, too -- even taking on some of Freya's alternate identities. I had no idea who was who and who was doing what to whom half the time. And then there was also the problem of not knowing if the character was dreaming, remembering, or living an experience of her own or of someone else.
You get to the end of the book and it's just more of a relief than an answer to any questions. I really wanted to like this book based on the strong beginning, but it just got more convoluted and confusing the further along it went. If I weren't stuck in a waiting room with this book, I don't think I could have finished it.
Better than expected! 
2008-09-04
I like Stross' work and based on the plot description on the jacket I thought this would be a quick romp. But CS delivers enough plot warps and character richness to make me slow down and read carefully and enjoy it. A great slant on the universe without humanity, chugging along with the creations that we made along the way. And these creations of course have adopted lives of their own, with their own faults (regarldless that some of them were stupidly built in by the creators). I was sucked into the plot, help captive, entertained and really liked the original treatment of the premise. Great fun.
SAturns Childen - why the title? 2008-08-31
the title is a clue to the book
Galileo wondered, "Has Saturn swallowed his children?", referring to the myth of the god Saturn eating his own children to prevent them from overthrowing him (Wikipedia)
a spy thriller 2008-08-30
Sometime in the twenty-third century, humanity went extinct—leaving only androids behind. Freya Nakamichi 47 is a femmebot, one of the last of her kind still functioning. With no humans left to pay for the pleasures she provides, she agrees to transport a mysterious package from Mercury to Mars. Unfortunately for Freya, she has just made herself a moving target for some very powerful, very determined humanoids who will stop at nothing to possess the contents of the package.
Single Femmebot, looking for True Love in a Loveless Solar System... 2008-08-29
What to do if you're a femmebot created to serve mankind, but mankind has gone extinct? Male sexbots are particularly rare (production/demand for them was lower, naturally), and the new standards of robot civilization are for smaller sizes (chibis) and anime-style faces. Aristos rule, cruelly, and Freya, a poor, outmoded female sexbot, was created to please and has difficulty behaving cruelly, even if she could be one of the Aristos.
Aristos can slave-chip one such as Freya at will. Mankind has left their robots heirs to a harsh civilization that mirrors the relationship of the humans and their robot servants. When Freya runs afoul of an Aristo on Venus, she ends up running for her so-called freedom, into a world of plots to bring back their Creators, to counter plots and the restrictions of the Pink Police (who keep biological replicators and matter from being spread illegally), to Freya's "graveyard" of chips holding the memories of her sisters who are no longer... which she can absorb, to the mysterious Jeeves corporation Freya ends up taking assignments for.
Things get quite complex and confusing, with Freya absorbing the memories of the mysterious ultra-assassin/agent Juliette... becoming her at times.
The concept and the themes of personhood and legacy and creating and relying on slaves and the morality of owning sentients--robots or otherwise, is fascinating. The worldbuilding of a robot civilization that outlasts man--and replaces him, building on mankind's past and reaching into the future is also intriguing. The aspects dealing with various robot factions wanting to work with biological matter and perhaps re-create man also has its interest, but that part of the book is the weakest. Freya's adventures, running about from Venus to Mars to Jupiter, dealing with the plots and counter-plots and multiple personalities, taking up most of the last part of the book, can be confusing and unrewarding. It doesn't seem to carry through the promise of the initial concept and world-building and was somewhat disappointing.
Shakespeare and manga as well as Heinlein and Asimov 2008-08-26
Since several other reviewers have already described the overall plot and the main themes of this book - what does it mean to be a person, what does it mean to be free vs. slave, etc. - I'm just going to concentrate on my observations of the individual elements of the book that intrigued me, rather than repeating those. So please read this review in conjunction with several others, so you get the whole picture.
Charles Stross has a habit of paying specific homage to previous generations of science fiction authors in his books - for example, to Cordwainer Smith in "Glasshouse" - and in this one, he specifically mentions Heinlein and Asimov. However, there are many more references in here than just ones to Heinlein's and Asimov's books, though those are the most obvious ones. Some of them will be references only readers who have read some of the body of literature from 30 to 50 years ago will get (or even older - how many people will read the line about a character with urea and acetate and remember the old idiomatic phrase about being full of piss and vinegar?); others may be references that only younger readers will get. (For example, right at the beginning, where some of the characters are described as bishojo and chibi forms - mostly, it's going to be the younger generation that automatically knows what those are, from manga and anime; old fogeys may have to go look it up on the intertubes, which interrupts the reading experience.) And sometimes the references are more trouble than they're worth - giving two of the characters seldom-used nicknames so that one fleeting Shakespeare reference can be thrown in. Nonetheless, it's fun to try and recognize all the sources that Stross is giving credit to.
Stross's characters are a mixed bag, as far as level of characterization goes. Sometimes it gets a bit confusing - which aliases are sibs of which others? Whose soul chip is in whose body now? Wait, are Domina and Granita related? In general, though, most of the avatars are identifiable enough to follow the plot. And some of the characters, even bit parts, are truly one-of-a-kind: Lindy the sex-crazed shipping pod, for example, and Bilbo the hobo, who may or may not be saner than he sounds, and Paris the hotel front desk.
Stross also has a way with words that can cause one to splort soda out of one's nose on occasion, such as the beginning of one chapter: "There can be few sights more out of place in a luxury hotel than an angry bald ogress in a ripped black gown who storms in through the service entrance and demands to talk to the management..."
There are many other small bits that all add up to fun - the passing Monty Python reference, the ring-tailed lemur who snores, calling someone Igor, Dr. Ecks, the parody of the Creation Museum (and the mocking of Intelligent Design/Creationism in general). There are probably a few I missed, since I haven't read nearly as great a percentage of the literature ever written as Stross obviously has. Also, speaking of literature, I note that as with most of Stross, this book has had excellent editing, and is almost entirely free of the spelling confusions and grammatical errors that plague most genre and popular fiction these days.
Family reading alert: even though, as many people have pointed out, the plot for this book is largely based on Heinlein's juveniles, this is most definitely not a kid's book or even young-adult; there's far more sex in it than even in Heinlein's later adult novels, and some of it is very kinky sex. Probably not for anyone too young to buy the book with their own charge card.
Summary: although there are flaws - moments where it's hard to tell the characters apart (which was also a flaw in later Heinlein), a few points where the character's actions were a bit of a non-sequiter - this is nonetheless a move-right-along, action-packed space opera, with a great deal of humor and wit.
Juliette, Juliette, Wherefore art thou? 2008-08-14
Stross is back only this time the future is one without people. This is only a technicality however. Humanity disappeared for the usual vague reasons (loss of vigor, environmental destruction, blah blah) but the surviving android/robots picked up where humans left off and since they were built in the image of the Creators, civilization has not really changed. Some androids are rulers - think Dominatrix Natash - and others are slaves, money is still a driving concern, there's lots and lots of sex, crummy space travel and enough political intrigue to put the current campaign for President to shame.
HALTING STATE inquired about the nature of reality, Virtual reality vs. "real" reality and what happens when simultaneous realities mix. Virtual reality pops up again in GLASS HOUSE. The Singularity of ACCELERANDO, a cult favorite, is nowhere to be seen here. Instead we have a rather crude and at times childish romp through the Solar System with a female android who becomes, at one time or another, Freya, Rhea, Juliette, Maria and Kate among others. One problem for the reader is the sometimes daunting task of trying to figuire out which one she is. But the muddled personalities and plot is topped with the intriguing ideas presented. Souls on chips, soul graveyard, the similarities of android societies, the attitudes toward the Creators, sex between machines, slow time - all very exicting yet one gets the idea Stross is simply having fun. He's not really serious about it all.
But even with imaginative inventions, witty and sometimes hilarious dialogue and action galore, nothing can rescue this runaway plot. If Freya, the protagonist, cannot figure out who she is, what's happening, what she's supposed to do and why, how in the world is the reader expected to do so? The fact that Stross had to patiently and repeatedly explain the myriad layers and strings of the "plot" (still unclear at the last) in all its wacky meanderings says volumes.
Stross is a gifted writer - one of the best of this generation. His work is cutting edge, not quite cyber punk, not total space opera, not Asimov or Heinlein or Bradbury. Instead he offers a unique perspective on the current state of sci-fi thought. In SATURN'S CHILDREN (the title is one of the worst) Stross has reverted to older times updated by interesting ideas. My grade: B
Very Confusingly Written 2008-08-13
I downloaded this title onto my kindle, and so far I'm only halfway through. While it seems that there is a good story buried in this novel somewhere, it's so confusingly written that I'm not sure I'll ever find it. But I still have hope.
