"Anvil of Stars" sequel to "The Forge of God".. - just the titles alone are enuf to make me wary.. BUT, that sort of thing is par for the golf course of black holes in SF - so no biggie.. In other words, the title is so rotten-cheese-ball that many a sensitive literary type might avoid it.. BUT, I liked this bk. Bear's plots are GRANDIOSE. I vaguely recall reading that he & Greg Egan are 2 of the main 'hard science' SF writers (or maybe that's just what I thought at some point or another) - mean...

unsung classic: This little-appreciated book is Greg Bear's best, in my opinion. Science Fiction it may be, but its themes are as adult and rigorous as any book in any genre. It is also very well written. An air of melancholy and despair - as well as barely suppressed terror - carries right through from start to finish, as befits the situation set up in its predecessor, The Forge of God. Bear does not shirk the philosophical implications of the story he is telling. The humans and aliens caught

So... since I think I'm getting fired tomorrow because I can't put up with people's bullshit,(it may or may not be the best thing that ever happens to me), I decided to go to some comfort food and review my favorite book ever: Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars!!! There are spoilers ahead, so please dont read this if you haven't read the first book: The Forge of God. That's the slow and painful story of how Earth gets wiped out by an intelligence that pretends to be benign, but is anything but. This is

This is the sequel to "The Forge of God". By the end of the first book, earth had been destroyed by alien von Neumann probes while another alien race had saved a small fraction of humans and transplanted them to Mars. They also constructed planet busting dreadnoughts to be sent out to hunt down and destroy the aliens responsible for the destruction of earth.In this book we follow one of these dreadnoughts crewed by human children. The ships are crewed by children because of the length of the mis...

This direct sequel to The Forge of God is as far removed from its predecessor in tone and content as could possibly be. The concept of the 'Law' is fascinating, made more so by the enigmatic nature of the Benefactors. Many questions that are raised throughout the novel are left unanswered and the morality of decisions is open to interpretation. This plays an important part in what makes this novel work on an emotional level. At first, I didn’t quite get Anvil of Stars. The sexual politics, calle...

This sequel is completely different from The Forge of God. The earth has been destroyed, most of the few survivors have been settled on Mars, and a small group of children/teenagers are sent on a mission of revenge to destroy the makers of the killing machines. I had a hard time getting into the story and found myself starting to skim--never a good sign. About halfway through, it picked up and I liked best the part that dealt with the "Brothers", an alien species that the humans team up with. Th...

The sequel to Forge of God is a remarkably powerful, dark novel. Anvil of Stars is one part space opera revenge tale and one part meditation on violence, social dynamics, and extreme power imbalances.The plot concerns a ship full of young people, assigned to exact punishment on the villains from the first book, aliens simply known as The Killers. Much of the first 2/3rds of Anvil is concerned with exploring this microcosm of human society. Bear sets out dozens of characters, most notably three l...

Reread. Holds up pretty well, and the braided Brother aliens are a remarkable creation. Sexy stuff, hmm. Well-written and well thought out book. I didn't much care for the ambiguous ending. A good book, but not up to the first (by long-ago memory).

Perhaps less tight in terms of structure than Forge of God, this sequel has at its center a deeply moral conundrum: How far do we take the Law? What does vengeance do to our souls? Vibrant, detailed and believable psycho-sexual social milieu and of course, dizzying hard sci-fi exposition, plus a moving, powerful theme, maybe even more relevant now post-9/11 than it was in 1991. Highly recommended.

Storyline: 4/5Characters: 3/5Writing Style: 3/5World: 5/5Rarely have I come across a sequel that so surpassed its predecessor. And I liked the predecessor.Book one was nicely self-contained; I didn't feel that I had to read on in the series, but seeing as I had enjoyed the first, I was happy to do so. Book two is also nicely contained. The very brief, straightforward prologue - numbering 300 words or so - sums up what one needs to know in order to read Anvil of Stars. Thereafter Bear moves forwa...

A fantastic, if completely unexpected follow up to "Forge of God." The former was a hard-sci fi look at how the world might end if the Earth were destroyed by killer-probes from outer space. This book follows a group of young survivors who were rescued by a mysterious race of benefactors at the end of "Forge." They are given a technologically advanced space-ship and a mission -- eradicate the race that destroyed Earth."Anvil" becomes a hybrid of "Ender's Game," "Speaker for the Dead" and "Lord o...

When I was reading the first quarter of this book, I began to get bored. Reading about the "children" train, slick and simulate was like watching a sloth climb up a tree. The narrative tells a lot of things and nothing at the same time. To make it worse, the dialogues were flat and disjointed. The children sounded like they had too much cold sleep. I was ready to give up and abandon the book, but I thought, "This is a Greg Bear work! Remember Eon? Darwin's Children?" Okay...so I decided to read

Read for the Space Opera 2019 Challenge.Wow, what a stunning book!I was thoroughly enamoured of the prequel to this, The Forge of God. I thought it was a brilliantly written apocalyptic epic, full of twists and turns and intrigue and enough scientific mystery to keep anyone with even a hint of interest in science fiction satisfied. I saw a lot of reviews that said the second book was better, and I scoffed.I was wrong. This is a work of brilliance that I'm not sure people truly understood at the

Slow start. Almost abandoned before 50 pages. By 100 was reasonably confident I wasn’t wasting my time.Turns out to be a fresh, original science fiction, and once Bear gets going his storytelling is good, the opening nearly put me to sleep.Good, hard science fiction; good character building; good plot.

Better than its predecessor, highly imaginative concepts.

This is that rare beast; a sequel that's significantly better than the first book.To be fair, it's a sequel that is also SO different to the first book that it almost doesn't feel like a sequel at all.There's no way to describe the premise of this book without spoiling the ending of the first one so I won't bother. I'll just say that I found the premise much more interesting than the first book's and the world building (or should that be galaxy-building?) much, much better.There are superficial

This book continues where The Forge of God ends off, which is the aftermath of the destruction of most of Earth and its inhabitants.Taken from the destruction by a superior race called the Benefactors a large group of children volunteer to find the race that attacked Earth and destroy them using technology supplied by the Benefactors.The Benefactors have supplied them with a massive ship and guidance in the form of robots that the children call “Moms”. After 5 years flying at near the speed of l...

This blew my mind when I read it, which I did before I read the first one (Forge of God), but it didn't suffer from any lack of context, standing alone perfectly well. I think it's a better book, with a huge concept and deep, dark themes. I suspect Greg Bear had Anvil of Stars in mind as a destination when Forge of God was being written, because the first book is more or less a setup for the much more interesting and horrifying story that follows.I say horrifying, and it is, on multiple levels.

The Forge of God was incredible. This doesn't necessarily pick up where it left off, but it's the sequel. A very different book from Forge. The science fiction is good, the writing isn't terrible - Bear manages to sustain a fairly consistent and growing atmosphere of tension and uncertainty throughout. The ideas are engaging and the world building is solid. The first half, however, I struggled completely to identify with the characters in any meaningful way. Other things I disliked: that it had

I really like The Forge of God so I thought I'd try Anvil of Stars. Mistake! I really didn't think this was very good. It was heavy going and I nearly gave up a couple of times in the first 100 or so pages, but ploughed on in the hope it would get better, but it just seem to plod along. It would have helped if I liked some of the characters, but none of them came out and grabbed me. I really couldn't get any feeling for them. This book is a perfect example of not knowing when enough is enough.