Spoiler free summary: An alien archaeologist digs through dead Earth's past to use humans as bait for the purpose of intergalactic pest control. Humans don't like being bait for alien spiders who drink their neurological pain endorphins, so they resist, ally, or betray one another to the exterminator. Centipedes, spiders, humans, gnomes, robots, ghosts, and zombies clash in a space war fought across 15 planets and two sentient "suns" that are actually machines designed to maintain the insect trap. Who is AA Attanasio? Oh, just a writer using every inch of his brain to pummel readers with the most original, outrageous story set to paper. He's a master mood manipulator, turning on a dime from cerebral (ow, my brain), to terrifying (dont read if you have arachnophobia), to grotesque (oh the distorts you'll know!), to badass (Vikings fighting robot zombies? fuck yeah!), to charmingly goofy (evil priests live in a fortress of insect parts on the north pole!), to poignant (humanity's glorious flaws radiate on every page). Though the writing is overwrought at times, it's actually a very taunt novel without a page of wasted space to advance the plot. Oh, and "the plot?" It only spans some seven thousand years. Seven billion years if you count the death of Earth. And the timeline is hardly linear--add in the paradoxes of time travel and parallel universes and it's perhaps the most ambitious story ever told. Somehow this complexity doesn't overwhelm, it only astounds. Even characters who appear in the flash of a year are given a memorable background and purpose. On the whole Attanasio transcribes a beautiful nightmare "rising from the tar pit of dreams." By the end I didn't want to wake up.
A.A. Attanasio takes sci-fi worldbuilding quite literally.The Last Legends of Earth is a fantasy/sci-fi epic that details the formation of an artificial planetary system in the far future. After being populated by Earth humans from the distant past, the saga tells how various cultures rise and fall within the system over a course of thousands of years.The story has a lengthy time-scale, and is structured by telling us the story of several protagonists who traverse both time and space within this star system. In some ways it's similar to Olaf Stapledon's Starmaker and Last and First Men, although the writing style is far more pulpy and less focused than Stapledon's epic. The majority of the story is captivating, though there are periods throughout the middle that did tend to bore, such as endless war-related chapters. (First half - great; middle - poor; final act - great).What really makes this story stand out though is the treatment of several fantastical and spiritual qualities (such as existence of an afterlife) as exact sci-fi sciences; whilst then subverting and minimalising explanations for more common sci-fi standards (such as explanations of time-travel, and instantaneous wormhole travel), reducing such explanations to that of lore-driven fantasy.
Do You like book The Last Legends Of Earth (1990)?
It's big (huge, collossal, overwhelmingly large) in time, societies and surroundings. It's complicated, with characters coming and going and coming and going, sometimes in both directions. And it's interesting, in a "how the heck is this all going to hang together?" kind of way. But,as much as the authour tries desparately to hold the whole thing together, in my case he failed to hold onto my interest. The best characters and civilizations come and go, and the boring, underdeveloped, predictable ones keep hanging on page after page. It seems to be trying to be space opera and sermon at the same time, and not pulling either off completely.It's worth reading, but don't expect too too much.
—Brian
WARNING to my friends: do NOT read reviews or summaries of this book on Goodreads, as every one I've seen has casually given away a big portion of the book, explaining what's going on in a way that the book intentionally takes a long time to reveal. A second NOTE: this book stands alone, so do not be fooled by the "Radix #4" label, as if it is fourth in a larger cycle.That said, this is an A.A. Attanasio book. Among other things, this means that it is a big story that has been intentionally and lovingly crafted to resemble another author's style exactly. This book is Attanasio's Jack Vance science fiction book. Jack Vance writes stories that feature complicated space opera/science fantasy plots with a vast array of improbably hyperbolic settings, dispassionate and sarcastic characters, and an indulgently elaborate vocabulary. Attanasio emulates all this and the distinctive style of Vance's prose flawlessly. It's a great story, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of science fantasy, space opera, and/or Jack Vance.
—Harold Ogle
