I read this many months ago (as of writing this review) and I put off reviewing it because it is actually the first part of a single very long story. I read this many months ago (as of writing this review) and I put off reviewing it because it is actually the first part of a single very long story. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to read part two (more on this later) and I've decided I should go ahead and write this one up regardless.
This is beautifully-realized science fiction, with aliens who feel believably alien. It's also deeply religious, as the alien race (technically, as the main character is one of them, it's humans who are alien, but whatever) have a profound and tangible connection to their God and are motivated by prophecy. There is no sideways dig at religious people, either; at no point does Zafiil have her faith broken, nor does she discover that It's All Been A Lie. I love that.
However, this is a very slow-paced story told out of sequence, and I've had trouble thinking who I can recommend it to despite how much I like the story, the characters, the worldbuilding, and the underlying concept. Even with all that, I've had trouble getting through book two because I'm rarely in the mood for what it offers. It's hard for me to convey how odd it is to be both captivated by a story and be disinclined to dive into it.
So this probably sounds like damning with faint praise, and it really isn't--I loved this book and I loved being immersed in it. Hogarth has a solid grasp of character and is incredibly inventive with her alien universe. (view spoiler)[Zafiil's people mature physically when they make a connection with their "lifemate" (not what they're called, but it's been long enough I can't remember the word) and she does so without realizing who of all the people she's encountered triggered the change, and I really, really want to see the culmination of that plot. (hide spoiler)] If I haven't finished the story, it's not because the books are flawed. I hope I'm eventually in a place to finish it....more
This feels like an extended meditation on summer, and vacations, and being young. Portia and her younger brother Foster always go to stay with their aThis feels like an extended meditation on summer, and vacations, and being young. Portia and her younger brother Foster always go to stay with their aunt and uncle and cousin Julian for three months in the summer. This year, Portia and Julian’s wanderings bring them to a lost holiday “colony” of houses that were once lovely homes along a lake shore, but when the lake dried up, everyone moved away. Now the only ones still there are an elderly brother and sister who grew up there as children and returned to settle into old age. Portia and Julian befriend them, and the settlement at Gone-Away Lake becomes a giant playhouse and park and wilderness preserve all in one.
Honestly, it’s just an incredibly placid novel (I don’t mean this in a bad way). I kept waiting for something to happen--not in the sense of being bored, just that I couldn’t believe their idyll could remain undisturbed. For example: Portia thinks a lot about Julian and how great he is on the train ride there, and I really thought it was leading up to him having changed and being "grown-up" and boring, but no, he's exactly as she remembers him. It’s a little like Swallows and Amazons, but less exciting and with more grownups.
I was a little frustrated with the children’s timidity, particularly the girls’, but it was written in 1957 and maybe that’s just how kids were back then (or, more accurately, that’s what adults thought kids were like back then, since Swallows and Amazons is about twenty years older and I think no one would call the Blackett girls timid). But the fun of exploring these closed-off houses, of setting up a clubhouse in the attic of one, of finally discovering the mysterious Villa Caprice--it made me wish, a little, that I could be that age again and have that opportunity....more
Boneyards picks up five years after the conclusion of City of Ruins, but the plot doesn't suffer for it. Rusch handles the inevitable changes in the cBoneyards picks up five years after the conclusion of City of Ruins, but the plot doesn't suffer for it. Rusch handles the inevitable changes in the characters over such a length of time, mainly because so much of it was set up in the previous book--did anyone not realize that Boss and Coop were going to end up together? Boss's team and the crew of the Ivoire have spent the last five years searching for some remnant of the civilization Coop and his crew left behind, five thousand years in the past, and constant failure has taken its toll on everyone. Rather than continue to search for still-active planet-based stations the Ivoire might use to get home, they decide to look to the stars--to seek out ancient starbases that might still have power, and possibly learn why so much of what they've found looks like it was destroyed in war.
The primary storyline is as compelling as the last, with Coop's increasing irrationality as he faces the reality that he and his crew are never going home providing interesting conflicts with Boss. There's more exploration of the Nine Planets worlds and systems and a return to the Room of Lost Souls, and the ending is tense and, as before, has a lack of resolution that makes you eager to see what happens next.
It's the secondary plot that I found most interesting, in which Squishy (a long-time friend of Boss's who was an important part of the first book) organizes a plan, without Boss's approval or help, to destroy the Empire's "stealth tech" research. Her execution of said plan alternates with scenes from Squishy's past that explain a lot about why she got involved in stealth tech in the first place, and what happened to make her so violently opposed to it. My problem is that Squishy was such a thoroughly unpleasant character in the first book, with her irrational and unexplained refusal to help Boss investigate the stealth tech in the first Dignity Vessel, that at first it felt like an attempt at rehabilitating her character. We learn, for example, that Squishy's absolute recalcitrance was because of a loyalty oath she'd sworn to the Empire when she first started working for them on stealth tech. That makes no sense to me. Keeping to an oath when you've already abandoned your committments, fled the Empire, given up completely on the research? When your silence is going to cost *more* lives? Not convincing. It seemed from the way Squishy's story was told that I wasn't supposed to have reacted to her in Diving Into the Wreck the way I did, that she wasn't intended to be so unpleasant, but it just didn't work for me. Despite this, I really enjoyed and admired the way past and present worked together; Rusch played out the revelations from the past at exactly the right pace.
I am even more eager to see what happens next than I was with the last book, which promises not only new discoveries, but new conflicts both with the Empire (thanks to Squishy) and with new forces (thanks to Boss and Coop)....more
**spoiler alert** I really wanted to like this book. Turns out I liked parts of it. The idea of millions of Earths branching out from ours--a variatio**spoiler alert** I really wanted to like this book. Turns out I liked parts of it. The idea of millions of Earths branching out from ours--a variation on different choices creating different realities--is pretty cool, as is the mechanism by which people reach them. Pratchett and Baxter gave a lot of thought to how the Earth might have developed differently under different circumstances, such as the lack of a moon altering tides and climate or even failing to deflect large asteroids from the planet. I also liked the vignettes interspersed with the main plot, about how the discovery of Stepping affected ordinary people. The characters were charming and the aliens were interesting, if not particularly original.
Unfortunately, what should have been the high point of the story fell flat. The mystery of who or what they're going to find at the far end of the Long Earth grows increasingly suspenseful--and then the answer is...sort of blah. The reason for the disaster that's driving the aliens inward toward our Earth, the origin Earth, is in fact disastrous, but doesn't feel disastrous--and it's dispensed with too easily, no sacrifice (literally none, as the last sentence of the book proves) and no payoff.
I was more dissatified with the social ramifications the authors believed would arise from this situation:
1. Supposedly, Stepping off to new and untamed wildernesses means the economy of Datum Earth (the main world) would start to collapse. That's sort of true in the sense that if you remove enough of any vital material from an economy, it will destabilize. But the historical example of the depopulation that happened because of the Plague in the 14th century says that not only will the economy restabilize, it can do so in a way that improves the lives of the survivors. Since it's impossible to bring anything made of iron into the other Earths, the people who stay behind get to keep all the resources of civilization. And since the authors also argue that violence and crime are almost entirely caused by overpopulation, wouldn't that mean that Datum Earth would see a similar drop in crime when the poverty-stricken rise out of poverty?
2. Except I don't actually buy the whole "crime is caused by competition for resources" thing. People kill for a lot of reasons that don't have anything to do with theft, and even if you look at one person killing another to take the second person's mate as competition for resources, it only takes three people for that to happen. The utopian settlements of the Long Earth come off, to me, as more of a social statement than a realistic possibility--a given outcome, based on assumptions that they didn't try to prove.
Overall, it was enjoyable once, but not a book I'd want to read again....more
This is definitely my favorite of the Priscilla Hutchins/Academy novels. Obviously it's because it has one of my favorite things, Archaeology In SpaceThis is definitely my favorite of the Priscilla Hutchins/Academy novels. Obviously it's because it has one of my favorite things, Archaeology In Space!, but also because it's so intense that I'm on the edge of whatever seat I'm using every time I read it. It's a lot like a horror novel in that respect; everyone is just so dumb about the risks they're taking, and they never get any smarter. It's always push, push, push, just a little farther, explore just one more room in the dark, deserted, alien spacecraft that might take off for the unknown reaches of the universe at any second. It's a little out of character for Hutch not to put the kibosh on George's riskier and more thoughtless plans, but if she did, we wouldn't have a novel, so I'm willing to go along with it. McDevitt comes up with some fascinating alien cultures and beautiful alien landscapes, but the team never does meet the creators of the chindi, or learn almost anything about them. This is rare for him, and I think it makes the book stronger for the added mystery....more
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