The noise revealed

The second in a two-volume story, this is rather better than the first half. That's partly because Whates is better at writing action than he is at some of the character stuff, and there's rather more action in this half than the first. There are rather more interesting ideas in this book than in the first, although, again, nothing truly out-standing. Some of the scenes in Virtuality, for instance, while largely irrelevant to the plot, are, nonetheless quite good as set pieces.

It's a mystery to me why the two books were even published separately - they aren't that long, and wouldn't have seemed at all unusual bundled into a single volume. It would have improved the first half, as well; it's not very effective on it's own, because all it does is set up the second one.

The major weakness here, though, is that the novel is really rather vague about what's actually happening. What, exactly, are the bad guys trying to achieve? Aside from killing the heroes, which is presumably a means to an end, I've no real idea. Although this is clearly meant to be the end of the story - in a way that the first book wasn't - there are just too many loose ends left hanging for it to be truly satisfying. I can only assume Whates is leaving it open for further books set in the same universe, but with nothing truly inspiring to grab me, I'm not sure I care.

Would have been 3.5 stars, were that an option.