Rating: 
Summary: Brin does it again
Review: he's got a great ability to play with scientific concepts in an understandable way. Loved the inclusion of the game of Life - not your typical Parker Bros. board game, but the mathematical one. What a concept! That you could actually have a strategy for it. This book keeps you thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Not my favorite, but not bad stuff
Review: I enjoyed Brin's combination of social commentary and an exciting, cliff-hanger-type story in the Uplift series. Glory Season continues in this thread, but after such an in-depth look at the main characters, seems to finish up in a hurry, and is quite a let down in the ending department. Still, it's not a bad read.
Rating: 
Summary: Brin totally loses it!
Review: I think I've read every book David Brin has written, and ALL of them are better than this one. He seems to have totally forgotten how to tell a story. The book starts with about 250 pages of tedious character development. When we finally get to a plot, it rambles all over the place pointlessly. And it has absolutely the worst, lamest ending to any book of any sort I've ever read. I can't believe I read the whole wretched thing. Brin is trying to explore how a society of clones would really function. That sociological exploration is actually quite well done, even if it is done over and over and over and over. And over. And then, just in case we missed the point, he ends the book with a patronizing afterword telling us what we should have understood from the book. In summary: a strong candidate for worst major science fiction novel of the 1990s. Yecch!
Rating: 
Summary: Proof that a good thrashing can't keep the strong ones down
Review: In a life where the dice is already loaded, favoring THEM, _Glory Season_ proves that it isn't easy to survive, but it can be done. Maia spends most of the novel on the run from somebody, captured, escaping, or healing from fresh wounds. Nothing whatsoever seems to go right for the girl, about the equivilant of 15 years of age and very much alone in life. One of the fantastic elements of Brin's work is that when the story unfolds, it keeps going. The circumstances are not laid out all at once, but rather are carefully and delicately given to the reader as if a gift from the author -- not uncommon in Brin's writing style -- something gratefully received after many years of the most basic and monotonous of books. After reading _Glory Season_ the reader is left fulfilled, proud of Maia as if perhaps she was their own daughter, a brave soldier and veteran of life.
Rating:
Summary: I lost sleep to read this book ..
Review: In truth, i read this book and did little else for a couple days (and i have two small children, one big dog, and a husband for which to care). David Brin is among my favorite authors partly because he knows the science he that one can always found weaved deftly into his science fiction. There's almost nothing more off-putting to me then to read some really wrong science "fact" in a scifi novel. Brin always gets his science right AND he is amazingly creative in the invention of his worlds, such as the one he created here, and populated with real-seeming people. This book has some lovely bits in it. For example, the part about Maia finding the truth of her and Leie's names was such a cruel blow and was incredibly well-written as well as furthering the book in an important manner by allowing Maia to begin cutting the strings binding her to the childish dream she and Leie shared. I felt cheated with the ending, however, and wondered if he simply needed to finish it in a hurry. That ending seemed to pat, too easy, dealing death too conveniently, to be the result of careful planning and strategy. The person who died didn't have to, shouldn't have. The conflict and tension between that character and Maia should have been worked out another way. _Glory Season_ left me wishing and hoping i'll stumble across another of Brin's books, unread and unknown to me, soon. Maybe he's finishing another one now ..
Rating: 
Summary: Okay, the ending was lame, but the rest was pretty good
Review: It's a very well written book, and the main character and her society is believable. Aside from the ending, the only real problem I had with it was that none of the other characters were as multidimensional as Maia. Her twin and Renna the alien could definitely have used some more character development. It's a good book if you're into sociatal critiques and lots of discusion on imaginary games especially, but I'd stear clear if you want nonstop action.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, the ending was lame, but the rest was pretty good
Review: It's a very well written book, and the main character and her society is believable. Aside from the ending, the only real problem I had with it was that none of the other characters were as multidimensional as Maia. Her twin and Renna the alien could definitely have used some more character development. It's a good book if you're into sociatal critiques and lots of discusion on imaginary games especially, but I'd stear clear if you want nonstop action.
Rating:
Summary: Tales of derring-do on the High Seas!
Review: Ok, I'm imagining a drinking game--every time David Brin uses the words "route" or "ululation," take a drink. Every time the heroine of Glory Season, Maia, goes unconscious, take a drink. After a few chapters, you and your friends will be too blind to read any more. Science fiction is not about the future, but about the present, and Brin likes to push buttons on 20th century issues with his books. in Earth, he tackled environmentalism, in the Uplift books, he allegorically ponders racial diversity and tolerance. In Glory Season, Brin has written a dependable, if heavy-handed adventure, imagining a future feminism in a matriarchal world of mostly cloned women, but there's a lot more going on here than some tables-are-turned male-bashing. Taking a cue from noir detective novels, the author has Maia, a good-hearted and bright young woman who finds herself at the lowest rungs of society, gradually unraveling a twisted plot, complete with double-crosses, unlikely allies, and even an exotic "homme fatale"(?) from outer space. And what private dick story would be complete without the protagonist getting conked on the head repeatedly? Brin's prose is serviceable, and he loves to pepper the action with extrapolated future words, corrupted from familiar English in a way that's just too precious sometimes. Also bordering on too-cute is the unquenchable optimism. Maia takes on loss, grief, kidnapping, beating, betrayal, torture, imprisonment, shipwreck, starvation, prostitutes, drug dealers, guerillas, pirates, all with Dickensian pluck and resourcefulness. Despite the silliness, though, Glory Season really has some Points to Ponder, some hardcore anthropological and evolutionary speculation, and lots of geeky humor (for example, in every Brin book, at least one character has to put on a fake Scottish accent at least once, no matter how unlikely, and Glory Season is no exception). Fans of traditional sci-fi adventure will appreciate it.
Rating:
Summary: Tales of derring-do on the High Seas!
Review: Ok, I'm imagining a drinking game--every time David Brin uses the words "route" or "ululation," take a drink. Every time the heroine of Glory Season, Maia, goes unconscious, take a drink. After a few chapters, you and your friends will be too blind to read any more. Science fiction is not about the future, but about the present, and Brin likes to push buttons on 20th century issues with his books. in Earth, he tackled environmentalism, in the Uplift books, he allegorically ponders racial diversity and tolerance. In Glory Season, Brin has written a dependable, if heavy-handed adventure, imagining a future feminism in a matriarchal world of mostly cloned women, but there's a lot more going on here than some tables-are-turned male-bashing. Taking a cue from noir detective novels, the author has Maia, a good-hearted and bright young woman who finds herself at the lowest rungs of society, gradually unraveling a twisted plot, complete with double-crosses, unlikely allies, and even an exotic "homme fatale"(?) from outer space. And what private dick story would be complete without the protagonist getting conked on the head repeatedly? Brin's prose is serviceable, and he loves to pepper the action with extrapolated future words, corrupted from familiar English in a way that's just too precious sometimes. Also bordering on too-cute is the unquenchable optimism. Maia takes on loss, grief, kidnapping, beating, betrayal, torture, imprisonment, shipwreck, starvation, prostitutes, drug dealers, guerillas, pirates, all with Dickensian pluck and resourcefulness. Despite the silliness, though, Glory Season really has some Points to Ponder, some hardcore anthropological and evolutionary speculation, and lots of geeky humor (for example, in every Brin book, at least one character has to put on a fake Scottish accent at least once, no matter how unlikely, and Glory Season is no exception). Fans of traditional sci-fi adventure will appreciate it.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating world
Review: Once again, I finished a David Brin novel hungry: hungry for more of the world and for more of the characters. This is one of the more interesting feminist worlds, that has surprising variety, despite the proponderance of clones as the primary reproductive method. It is also a world approaching a period of fast changes, brought on by a courier from the worlds they left behind, with a message they cannot ignore. The reader doesn't see the end, only the beginning of these changes, which is why I was hungry to see more of how this culture will adapt to the news and the changes it will bring. It's a novel of coming-of-age. Maia, the protagonist is a young adult, cast out to discover her own talents and worth. At the end, we see the emerging adult in Maia, as well as others of her generation. Only the complexity of the themes prevent Glory Season from being a 'young adult' novel. (I like a good young adult novel, I should add.) Does Brin create a believable world? Given its basic premises, I'd say yes. The details are many: this is no cardboard structure in which the characters and plot ramble. It is a richly textured and well thought out world. Although women are dominate, men have not only procreative function, but also their own niches and culture. I was smiling when I finished this book: I can still say I haven't read a Brin I didn't like.
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