Andrew Spink reviewed The War of the Maps by Paul McAuley
Imaginative and enjoyable
4 stars
This was the first book I have read by Paul McAuley, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read a review somewhere that said he was the most imaginative sci-fi author in Britain today, and whilst there might be other contenders for that title (Peter Hamilton, perhaps?) it certainly sounded worth giving him a try. I was not disappointed. War of the maps is very imaginative and it also has a good plot and well-developed character to boot. I particularly enjoyed his use of ant biology in the plot. McAuley quotes Terry Pratchett at one point ("Or have things so degenerated in your sandy scourhole of a country that you think you live on a flat plate riding on the back of a turtle, or some such nonsense?"), which is certainly enough to put him in my good books as well as a passing reference to a famous evolutionary biologist ("but …
This was the first book I have read by Paul McAuley, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read a review somewhere that said he was the most imaginative sci-fi author in Britain today, and whilst there might be other contenders for that title (Peter Hamilton, perhaps?) it certainly sounded worth giving him a try. I was not disappointed. War of the maps is very imaginative and it also has a good plot and well-developed character to boot. I particularly enjoyed his use of ant biology in the plot. McAuley quotes Terry Pratchett at one point ("Or have things so degenerated in your sandy scourhole of a country that you think you live on a flat plate riding on the back of a turtle, or some such nonsense?"), which is certainly enough to put him in my good books as well as a passing reference to a famous evolutionary biologist ("but I soon learned that there are more kinds of beetles than there are people in the entire kingdom. The creator gods had a particular ,liking for them, it seems", which refers to J.B.S. Haldane's remarks about God having an "inordinate fondness for beetles"). This was the first book by Paul McAuley that I read; it will not be my last one.