184

In the first two books, teams of human scientists arrive on a planet ostensibly to study the society of its pre-industrial people who have an interesting concept of "shared reality" that keeps them pretty peaceful... or controlled? Also, one of their "moons" is actually a remnant of the same technology as the star gates that humanity is using for their interplanetary travel. This orb may be important because humanity is engaged in a genocidal war with another species, and they're currently losing.
The team must manage both the primary objective of scientific and anthropological study (along with the common non-interference principle) while also investigating the nature of the orb and maybe whether it's causing this "shared reality" thing?

This last one takes most of the action off the planet and deals with the politics and logistics of using their newly discovered information/weapon against the enemy.

It's been about a year and a half since I read this book (I'm really behind on my book reviews, sigh) and I didn't remember much about this one after reading the description. I opened it back up and a lot more came back to me. While the story was entertaining, and I seem to remember I sped through the trilogy in a week, I'm not finding much memorable about it. ( )

Probability Space is the final book in Nancy Kress' "probability trilogy," with the action taking place a couple of years after the previous book in the series, Probability Sun. Here, we follow retired Major Kaufman and his partner, a Sensitive named Marbet, as they travel back to World to rescue the humans who remained behind at the end of the last book; there, they encounter Magdalena, a major power-broker in the human universe and a force unto herself. Meanwhile, physicist Tom Capelo has been kidnapped and his 14-year-old daughter Amanda is on the run, hoping to find out what happened to him. These four are all pursuing their own agendas in the context of the interstellar war with the Fallers, a race that shows inexplicable, genocidal hostility toward humans, and that war is not going so well.... As the final book in the trilogy, this both satisfies and does not; Kress keeps the plot racing along (indeed, it's quite action-packed in a way I've not seen with her work before) and we do reach a conclusion to the larger situation that is both interesting and unexpected. But she has her characters leaving World again early on, and we never return there; I would have liked to have had a scene visiting that planet one last time because it was such an interesting place. So, I'm a bit disappointed, although I still recommend the book, and the entire trilogy. ( )

I want another installment just so I can find out how humanity copes with the enormous changes found at the end of this book! ( )

In this novel, a somewhat confusing, improbable, but nevertheless interesting set of challenges are resolved by a group of cantankerous, uni-dimensional heros. Repetition used to carry the storyline across three books is a bit annoying. However, the story and its resolution were both engaging and satisfying to me. I did not expect the conclusions, and perhaps neither did Nancy. ( )