End of Fame

I usually don't pick up novels I have never heard anything about. There is so much to read out there, I don't like risking my time on unknowns.But I am so glad I picked up this book. I loved it. After I read it, I went out and found Adams' and Brooks' first novel, the Unwound Way, which I enjoyed just as much.The books are pure space opera, but of the best kind. It's like all my favorite plot elements in a science-fiction adventure have been brought together and judiciously mixed with a healthy dose of originality. These books have some of the most delicious plot twists I have ever had the pleasure to be confounded by.I hate comparisons to other others, but I want to make people read these books, so I'm going to make a simplified comparison. If Robert Heinlein, Roger Zelazny, and Larry Niven had ever collaborated together, the results would have been something like this. Read this book.

To say this book is well-textured is akin to saying the Mona Lisa is a nice picture; well, yes, that's true, but it hardly does the book justice. Adams and Brooks draw on the life of George Gordon Byron, the sixth Lord Byron, among the best known of the Romantic poets. The protagonist in FAME is Evan Larkspur, whose life resonates with Byron's but ultimately follows its own course. Far in the future, Larkspur's works have become the voice of the Kanalism movement. Seeking to drive out the tyrannical Column that rules humanity, the Kanalists hope to re-establish an earlier, more beneficent government. The title of the book evokes a stanza from Canto I of DON JUAN, one of Byron's best known works: What is the end of fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills', is lost in vapour; For this men write, speak, preach, and heros kill, And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper', To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. It would take a 6000 word essay to discuss why FAME is such an effective play on Byron's words. Read it, and you'll see. This book is like an intricate machine, as beautiful to see as it is intriguing to operate, with lustrous gears and glossy levers, parts made from precious materials, gold, silver, ivory, ebony, all interlocking with intricate pieces. The closer you look, the more details you see, like a fractal design revealing new structure at increasingly greater magnifications. It's a versatile engine, brilliantly designed and lovely to boot. FAME is a great book. Here's hoping it's just the beginning of fame for Adams and Brooks.