Cyber Seed quadrilogy 2: Sycamore 2

Sycamore 2 follows on (not entirely unsurprisingly) from Sycamore.

The story sets off in (quite literally) a totally different direction from the first book, and we get far more character development from one or two characters we've met before but not learned much about, some who we've heard about but know almost nothing of, and some who are completely new.

The plot is far more about a group of people trying to achieve something, whereas the first book covered a wide variety of characters, story threads, and events. As such, the second book feels much tighter, and more focused on an objective, whereas the first book introduced a whole slew of new ideas and concepts to the reader, in order to get the background for the entire series going.

All in all this feels like a much more involved story, keeping the reader's attention, and getting to feel that you understand the characters. I think the first book was just a bit too much "technology and marketing, with an uncaring protagonist", where it was difficult to portray more than a minimum amount of detail about many of the people involved. The second book makes up for that very well.

The tension is also maintained nicely - there are episodes of relaxation (where we get to know more about the characters in a friendly environment) as well as episodes of conflict (where we get to know more about them in other ways), but these are combined with aspects of the story where unexpected events put people into semi-crisis situations and let the story take the reader on little roller-coasters. I'm sure there are bigger ones on the way in books 3 and 4, otherwise this wouldn't be a quadrilogy.

By the way, I notice the author's apostrophe problem from the first book appears to be gone; perhaps the second one had a better proof-reader.

Sycamore 2 is followed by Sycamore X.

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