Coyote
By
Allen Steele
When
a moon of a distant gas giant is discovered to probably be capable
of sustaining human life, a spaceship is constructed to fly a crew
and settlers out there. The journey will take over 200 years, and
the people will spend the time on the ship in stasis; it is mankind's
greatest adventure. But this is the late 21st century, and the United
States as we know it has long since been replaced by the draconian
United Republic of America. The project has all but bankrupted the
country, many people live in abject poverty, but something unexpected
is about to happen. A group of "intellectual dissidents"
bound for incarceration in a camp hijack the ship, and a very different
group of people are soon setting out for the world of Coyote.
The first in a trilogy, this very
engrossing novel combines classic SF's uplifting "sense of
wonder" with a modern grittiness. There is a unique world to
explore on one hand, and political machinations on the other. I
kept expecting clichés to spoil an imaginative story, but
somehow most of them fail to materialize - the author is too inventive
for that. Add a cliff-hanging ending and a real page-turning atmosphere
as the settlers struggle with their new home, and you have a winner.
On the other hand, I never got used to the fact that most of the
book is told in the present tense (always, in my opinion, an odd
and jarring choice for a novel's voice) but I did applaud the excerpts
of diaries that told the tale through some of the settlers' eyes.
This would have been even better if more viewpoints had been employed
a la Wilkie Collins, but even this did not truly alloy my pleasure
in this delightful book. Highly recommended.
|
The
Book |
Orbit
(Time Warner) |
February
2005 |
Paperback |
1841493678 |
Science
Fiction |
More
at Amazon.com
US
|| UK |
Excerpt
|
NOTE:
|
The
Reviewer |
Rachel A Hyde |
Reviewed
2005 |
NOTE:
|
|