The Quiet War by Paul McAuley is an interesting book about the choice people make. The book reminds me, in some ways, of Firefly. They both deal with a central authority and outer planets that want to go in a different direction. McAuley has created an novel that deals with different science fiction topics (ecological disaster, bio modifications and space wars), but the novel as a whole doesn’t hold together.

With ecological disasters befalling Earth, the distance between the Earth people and the people on the outer planets has grown. Not only the physical difference, but the difference in their points of view. The outers are more willing to make bodily modifications and they also practice a pure democracy, everyone gets to vote on everything. The Rainbow Bridge project is designed to help bridge the differences between the two groups. But when people start being killed the peace process is threatened to be derailed.

The big problems I had with the novel is that the characters and storylines don’t always hold together coherently. A character from the first couple of chapters doesn’t show up again for a few hundred pages. When he shows up again, it’s jarring to have to go back and try to remember who this is. And then this character plays a big part in the rest of the novel. Other characters are shown to be mysterious and hard to find through the first half of the book and in the second half, people show up on her doorstep all the time. The war itself is confusing and you’re left with the impression that one side won, but other places could be interpreted that they lost.

There is some good writing and some interesting ideas in the novel, but the book just doesn’t hold together that well. Mildly recommended.