aryn Alwyn never really did what was expected of him. Instead of going into the family business--one of the world's largest net media corporations, UniComm--he decided to become an interstellar pilot in the Federal Service. After over a decade in the FS, he made his own way by getting work as a freelance "methodizer" and "edartist," a media and information analyst and commentator--but still, he had nothing to do with the great engine of the family fortune.
It's not until a series of attempts are made on Daryn's life that he finds himself becoming more and more drawn into the world of UniComm, a world where great power and influence are wielded with high stakes and shadowy moves. But why him? Surely his father or his older brother, the two top men at UniComm, or even his sister, a major force in the media in her own right, would make better targets than he.
And who was doing this? Could it be one of the many groups of "norms" generally opposed to "pre-selects"--the genetically altered elite of post-Collapse Earth who hold nearly all of the world's highest positions of power and therefore much of its wealth, a segment of society of which Daryn is a member--despite the fact that Daryn himself often questions the establishment in his edartist pieces? Would such groups really have the resources it would take to carry out all these elaborate assassination attempts? Or is it someone or something else much more powerful, much more devious, and much more subtle? Whatever or whoever it is, its big mistake, time and time again, seems to be in underestimating the resources of Daryn Alwyn himself.
An only mildly-interesting tale
While the world L.E. Modesitt Jr., (perhaps best known for his Recluse fantasy saga) creates in The Octagonal Raven is a relatively intricate one, filled with numerous future technological and sociological concerns, it's a quite poorly and uninterestingly realized one.
One of the main things that's bothersome about this book is the almost unbelievable amount of repetition it contains. Everything from "philosophical" musings, to plot recaps, to characters' reactions are used over and over again with little or no variation in expression or purpose, bogging down an already slow and awkwardly moving story. And while it maintains the suspense of its central mystery fairly competently, this tale probably could have been told in a third fewer pages.
The characters in this book are more often than not terribly dull and unrealistic, mostly because of the copious amounts of insipid and pretentious dialogue that issues from them. The book's protagonist, the reluctant "hero," Daryn Alwyn, from whose (first-person) point of view the entire tale is told and who is an--essentially self-proclaimed--arrogant elitist, is no exception.
The science fiction aspects of this book are none too exciting or innovative, and only fairly well explored, utilized and explained in the story, and the futuristic terminology Modesitt uses could even be said to be downright goofy. Also goofy is the subplot of the "love story" that develops between Daryn and an old friend--when it's not sappy it's ridiculous. The book's ethical concerns (primarily of a genetically altered humanity and notions of "superiority") are at best muddled and at worst suspect.
The Octagonal Raven is also very much about professionalism, which doesn't always make for very good reading; large portions of the latter half of the book are more a corporate-media-takeover/law drama than anything else, which here is often about as exciting as sitting through a weekly staff meeting. All in all, this book feels very much like a confused fantasy of self-importance, despite whatever else it may be setting itself up to be.
