Yet another book I heard from Christian. Rainbows End (buy it from Amazon.ca) was nominated for the Hugo Awards last year (Edit: Oh wait, it not only was nominated; It won the award!), and was also on my wish list for a little while when I heard that the ebook version was now available for free on the author’s web site. I downloaded it to my PDA and read it over a somewhat long period of time.

Rainbows End is a science-fiction book of a near future where enhanced reality is widely available. Robert Gu Sr. is back from the Alzheimer’s disease. Not only did he got his memory back, he also responded really well to a rejuvenating treatment that put him back in his 20ies. The only problem is that he now has to fit in this society where the inability to use the augmented reality is just has bad as being illiterate nowadays. To learn to fit in, he goes back to high school, along with other elder people and a bunch of kids, including his own grand-daughter.
Around the world, a team of international security experts stumble upon a plan to conceive a mass mind control device. They try to stop it by hiring a hacker, Mr. Rabbit, who has to help infiltrate and sabotage the terrorists’ labs.

Robert Gu Sr gets involved, along with his friends and family, in a grand scheme of secrets, promises and betrayals.

I have hard time telling how fast the story develops in eBooks I read because I don’t have the same feeling of the thickness of the paper. The beginning of Rainbows End seems relatively slow, but steady. We quickly get the feeling that the story of the Gus, Juan and Mr. Rabbit are intertwined, but it doesn’t become fast-paced until the last 3rd of the book. The setup takes a long time, but explains a lot about the world the characters evolve in.

Rainbows End is a futuristic espionage story. The main themes are friendship, betrayal and family. It explores many of the implications of technologies for this futuristic society, and does it without bringing the story to a halt or slowing it down to a point where the reader looses interest. I would not hesitate recommending it.

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Lectures by Alexandre Lemieux