Arthur C. Clarke Reading Challenge 2013 – May: The City and the Stars

The May Arthur C. Clarke 2013 Reading Challenge book is The City and the Stars, published in 1956 and now available from Gollancz

‘Clarke’s masterful evocation of the far future of humanity, considered his finest novel… Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar; for millennia its protective dome shutout the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rules the stars. But then, as legend had it, The invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, A Unique to break through Diaspar’s stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.’

Review
The City and the Stars is a rather unusual book and makes me marvel, yet again, at the breadth of Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction vision. While all of the novels (at least the ones that I’ve read) focus on man’s compulsion to explore the stars, man’s relationship to those stars is very different in each. The City and the Stars likewise presents a new perspective but this time it’s mankind that is unfamiliar. In this novel, man’s exploration of space took place billions of years in the past and the universe is now out of bounds – not by force, but by choice. This is a vision of man’s future in which the stars hold no interest for him. Except for that one individual, born ever so rarely, who is a Unique. Uniques question the physical barriers that keep mankind secure and non-changing. They usually vanish. The latest Unique, Alvin, though, decides he wants to take everyone with him.

Diaspar is a perfect, self-contained city on a mostly desert planet that has lost its oceans and much of life over the billions of years since it was the Earth that you and I would recognise. Humans now live for a thousand years or more. They are not born, instead they are downloaded in an organic adult state from vast memory banks that preserve all human life. Each person has lived before, countless times, and as they grow older their memories from past lives are restored to them. Uniques, as the name suggests, are different. They are new. But although the city is perfect and people have evolved into physical perfection (albeit without teeth or body hair) , it still has its troublemakers. Jesters are regularly created with little apparent purpose other than to irritate or spoil. But surely no creation, whether it be a Jester or a Unique, is a mistake?

The legend has it that once mankind explored the stars but this brought the invaders to the planet who gave the people of Earth an ultimatum. In order to survive they must confine themselves, not just to Earth but to one corner of it – Diaspor. However, Alvin is as determined to explore beyond the walls of Diaspor as the people within are to stay there.

What Alvin finds on his journey, on Earth and beyond, takes us into more familiar territory for a Clarke novel. The descriptions are as vivid and enticing as anything else I have read by Clarke. But whereas the environments are fascinating, the character are far less real (or personable) than I’ve become used to in Clarke’s books. These people are simply too odd to relate to! They have superficial relationships and think little about the wider scheme of things because there is nothing left to say. Existence has become indolent. As this novel was written in the fifties, and despite its assertion that sexism no longer existed, Diaspor’s women still seem to have a secondary role to the men that they would seem to spend much of their time fancying, but otherwise, this is a bland society.

The past, so many billions of years ago, seems so much more intriguing. What drove mankind out of the stars? Who were the invaders? What happened to the rest of Earth? Of course, this is probably the point. Alvin, the Unique, wants to know the answers to these questions just as much as we do and it is this curiosity for what lurks outside the walls that drives him on and drives people like me to read science fiction.

Written more than fifty years ago, The City and the Stars is remarkably timeless, even in its descriptions of technology. I was troubled, though, by how the Earth, let alone a city on it, had survived for all these billions of years especially when indolence appears to be the chief personality trait of its inhabitants. Nevertheless, The City and the Stars is an extremely thought-provoking look at the role of mankind in space and the perils of turning one’s back on the stars.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 480
Year 2013 (7 May)
Buy: Paperback
Source: Bought copy

Review
It seems only fair to warn you that, should you pick up Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave, whether in innocence or with deep intent, you will lose all sense of time and self. Your sleep will be invaded by the urgent compulsion to read and your need to communicate with other humans will degenerate to ‘shhhh’ sounds. I picked it up on one day and finished it the next with big bags under my eyes. It’s not a short book, not that that makes any difference to the drive to finish it once you’ve started. The longer the better.

The 5th Wave is a story about alien invasion (and not about waves, which was my pre-reading mistake), told by a number of youngsters who have survived the initial four waves of terror which have wiped out most if not all of their families and left so few alive to fight the threat. They all live in dread of the fifth wave. What will it be and when will it happen? They all know it must come because it is horrifically clear to the few left that no human is meant to survive this cleansing of the planet. This sounds exciting and blimey it is!

Young Adult science fiction done well is unbeatable in my eyes. But Rick Yancey has not only raised the bar, he’s also removed some of my difficulties with YA fiction on the strength of his superb characterisation. I don’t expect YA fiction to be aimed at me (I am more youngish than young) but I do want it to be populated by believable characters, including the teens. I was one once, after all. The central figure of The 5th Wave is Cassie, a 16-year-old young woman who worries about her self-image, boys, seeming vulnerable, at the same time that she worries about whether The Silencers will kill her dead. The beauty is she knows how this would seem. She worries about it. She is a witty, warm, living, breathing young woman on the page and I empathised with her completely and liked her very much indeed. There is a little romance here but it’s fragile, fraught and full of feeling.

Cassie is such a strong character and we see so much of the story through her troubled eyes that she’s hard to compete with but there are others too who have left a strong impression here. I’m mentioning no names – I would really like you to discover the people of this novel for yourself.

You expect sound worldbuilding in a good YA SF novel and you certainly get it here. We follow the decay of daily and family life, of normality, through the waves. You also expect a thrilling plot and you’ll find it here by the bucketload. Rick Yancey has written a story so tightly plotted and packed with imagination that it’s almost impossible to put the book down at the end of a chapter. The structure and plot are designed to pull you in and the characters ensnare you deeper. The prose balances perfectly the action of the story with the thoughts of the characters. The tension between the two is superb.

If I read a YA novel I enjoy more this year, I’ll be very happy indeed. The 5th Wave is published today. Buy it.

Zenn Scarlett by Christian Schoon

Publisher: Strange Chemistry
Pages: 350
Year: 2013 (2 May)
Buy: Paperback
Source: Review copy

Review
Zenn Scarlett is no ordinary 17 year old. She is a novice Exovet, or alien vet, on Mars at a time when the planet is separated from Earth by a Rift, its inhabitants looking instead starwards, its explorers travelling across great distances on spaceships powered by Indra, enormous beasts who tunnel through the lightyears, directed by Shepherds, carrying mankind from one far planet to another. Zenn’s ambition is to be an Exovet like her late mother, treating exotic alien species from across the Galaxy that are dropped off on the planet because of this unique care. These are no ordinary patients, not in the least. They can be the size of villages, they can fly, leap or soar, they can be as small as a handful or as dangerous as a T-Rex. Some can even help out around the place. But while Zenn and her uncle Otho are focused on providing care for their patients, the inhabitants of Mars are facing hardships not least due to the Rift. Land and resources are becoming limited. Handy, then, that the lease of Otho’s centre should be up for renewal. Quite apart from the land issue, not all of the inhabitants of Mars are happy to have such monsters about. As Zenn works hard to finish her training, these are difficult days.

With Zenn Scarlett, Christian Schoon has begun what promises to be a thoroughly enjoyable and beguiling series of science fiction novels for young adults. Zenn herself is an appealing heroine, dealing with considerable parent issues – especially the death of her mother in appalling circumstances – while suffering the more usual and earthly problems associated with these years. She wants to do what’s right and she wants to achieve her professional goal to become a qualified Exovet but the presence of Liam, a local towner, is a reminder that life should not be all work. But these thoughts and troubles are secondary to Zenn’s drive to prove her ability as an Exovet to her uncle. But, things don’t always go right. Perhaps not everything is under her control. It’s possible, though, that something very odd is going on.

The glory of Zenn Scarlett, though, without doubt, are the alien lifeforms that Zenn must treat. They are mind blowing. These scenes captivated my imagination, especially as the novel progressed. I’m spoiling none of these here.

After an excellent prologue, the novel settled down to a style that I felt was comfortably aimed at a younger readership. In the second half, though, the pace picked up and the adventure took off and I moved towards the edge of my seat. This half was very hard to put down while I found the first a little difficult to pick up. This was aggravated by some of the teenage angst, the wandering, temporarily unfocused plot and the wearisome cuteness of Zenn’s annoying little alien pet, Katie. Offsetting Katie, though, is the very likable and fun swarm-insect assistant Hamish who is trying to learn independence of thought – not easy for a giant alien bug. However, as I say, these early irritations do iron themselves out as the novel proceeds and by the end I was more than ready to read the next book in the series.

I think that any youngster with a love of animals and a fascination for the wonders of space will be enchanted by Zenn Scarlett and its strong, warm and brave heroine.

Shift by Hugh Howey (Wool Trilogy 2)

Publisher: Century
Pages: 576
Year: 2013 (25 April)
Buy: Hardback, Kindle
Source: Review copy

Review
After finishing Wool earlier this year, I couldn’t read Shift quickly enough. A follow up to Wool, and the middle novel of a trilogy, it is actually a prequel. Shift contains, within three stories now republished in one, the origin story of the silos. We learn about the construction of these claustrophobic repositories of humanity, their reason for existence, the people who populate them or seek to destroy them, and we follow the story of one of the most memorable characters of Wool. As the years pass by in shifts we catch up with this earlier novel and, by the time we do, the twists and shocks are piling up on one another, like the levels that stack one upon other through the buried silos. What all this means is that you mustn’t read Shift until you’ve read Wool. Minor spoilers for Wool are inevitable here.

In the first shift – Legacy – we are introduced to Donald Keene who lives in the US in the very near future. A young congressman, he is assigned a great task by the much older, and formidable, Senator Thurman. He is set to design and build a number of massive silos, dug into the earth. As the urgency of what he is doing grows, Donald becomes increasingly concerned that when the time comes, his wife must be by his side.

In parallel to this story set in a world we would recognise is another but this one is in a different place entirely. Troy is awoken for his first shift in the silos. Fed pills to forget, his job is to be head of IT for all of the silos. Once his shift is done, he will be put back to sleep until it is time for the next. The days of his shift are hard, not least because he must deal with increasing awareness and well as growing problems of unrest in the other silos. These other silos are not organised in shifts, intercepted with sleep, but with men and women living their lives, the generations passing, all ignorant. Confinement, a lack of answers, strict rules, can produce revolt and, should it get too bad, it’s the head of IT, or Troy, who has his finger on the big red button.

The other two shifts – Order and Pact – move between the different silos and characters within them. We follow Troy’s further shifts, learning more and more about his history as he himself starts to remember. We also watch closely the driving determination of Mission Jones, an individual in one of the other silos who wants to make a difference. In Pact we learn the truth about Wool‘s Solo in a story of extreme isolation and deprivation.

Throughout the three stories, now merged into one, characters attempt to understand the incomprehensible. Some have knowledge of the past and have the power that this gives them while so many others are ignorant, trying to live lives with relationships, responsibilities and hope. All the time, though, these people are being watched and observed like mice in a maze. Nevertheless, what Troy goes through in his position of relative power is just as harrowing as anything that Jones and Solo must stomach in their own struggles.

I loved Shift, perhaps even more than Wool. I was completely fascinated by the opening third. The normality of life in the United States in the 21st century, with Donald worrying about his wife who in turn is worried about his working relationship with an ex-girlfriend, contrasts brutally with the reasons for the silos’ construction and then the scenes set within the silos themselves, many years later, when the horror has been realised. In the final third, Howey has presented an intimately leisurely picture of Solo’s years – his fear and terror, his loneliness and loss and the sheer unpleasantness of what he has to endure – and it is all extremely poignant and, for me at least, quite frightening. I especially enjoyed the combination of this metallic, tubular and noisy world with the human stories. I was engrossed by the ways in which the apocalyptic vision of part 1 became the dystopian world of parts 2 and 3.

Reading Wool first is essential. The context is necessary in order to appreciate our increasing understanding of the silos and the people who created them. The clues were there in Wool but now we meet the people on the other side of the radio conversations. We learn that Juliette’s actions in Wool have history behind them and it is clear that they won’t end here.

The strengths of Wool continue in Shift. The claustrophobia of the silos has even increased, now that we know what’s outside. The structure of Wool and Shift are fragmented, purposefully so. I did have some trouble remembering what happened in which silo but this didn’t affect my read.

Shift is extremely difficult to put down. The wait until the final part of the trilogy – Dust – in October, will seem long.

Other reviews
Wool – Wool is also out in Paperback today (25 April)

Arthur C. Clarke Reading Challenge 2013 – April: A Fall of Moondust

The April Arthur C. Clarke 2013 Reading Challenge book is A Fall of Moondust, published in 1961 and now available from Gollancz.

‘A brilliantly imagined story of human ingenuity and survival from one of the undisputed masters of science fiction. Time is running out for the passengers and crew of the tourist cruiser Selene, incarcerated in a sea of choking lunar dust. On the surface, her rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the mercilessly unpredictable conditions of a totally alien environment. A brilliantly imagined story of human ingenuity and survival, A FALL OF MOONDUST is a tour-de-force of psychological suspense and sustained dramatic tension by the field’s foremost author.’

Review
Written before the Moon landings but set at a time when tourists explore the surface in space boats, this utterly gripping disaster story has travelled the years very well indeed. Has a sea ever been better named than the Sea of Thirst? When its lethal dust shifts in an earthquake (moonquake?), it swallows the vessel Selene whole. At a depth of 15 metres, the crew and passengers can do nothing but wait for discovery, hoping that their air can last long enough, that they won’t be cooked alive, that they won’t die of thirst. As the clock ticks relentlessly, we follow the efforts of engineers and scientists to discover and rescue the craft as well as the struggle of those within the ship to survive, with their bodies and sanity intact.

Although written over half a century ago, the 21st century vision that Clarke presents in A Fall of Moondust is beguiling and believable. The solar system is being explored while the wealthy can now visit and explore the surface of the Moon. A new generation, including the Selene’s pilot Pat Harris has never even set foot on Earth. Instead, they know the home planet only as a jagged crescent in the Moon sky. The passengers are an interesting bunch. They include Commodore Hansteen (travelling incognito until the situation demands he reveal his identity), an astronaut celebrity who led the first expedition to Pluto. There is also a lawyer, a professor of zoology, a journalist, a doctor, as well as others who might not necessarily be quite what they seem. In a confined stage such as this, there is great potential for drama, secrets and revelations, even romance, and as the passengers and crew seek to entertain each other, they can’t help but entertain us at the same time.

Despite the potential for great tragedy, intensified by the drama unfolding on the surface as the rescuers race to save those buried in full view of Earth’s television audiences, there is a humour to the story’s telling that contributed enormously to my enjoyment. While some of the passengers take refuge in a game of poker, others seek amusement in the two novels brought aboard – the Western Shane and a book called The Orange and the Apple, a historical romantic romp which pairs Nell Gwynne with Isaac Newton. The tact, chivalry and humour with which Commodore Hansteen in particular maintains calm made me chuckle a fair bit.

The most telling sign of the passing of the years since 1961 is in Clarke’s female characters and in the way they are handled by both Clarke and their fellow passengers. Both Earth and the Moon are Men’s Worlds. There are numerous references to ‘men’ – the passengers are ‘like some ancient tribe gathered round the camp fire, in a wilderness that held no other men’ – and the professions aboard (with the exception of the journalist whom they all treat as a troublemaker) are held by men. There are certainly no women among the rescuing engineers and politicians. Poor Mrs Schuster has a dreadful time – her weight and age regularly under review, her previous dancing job a source of mirth. Women are asked (by the men) to help the space hostess Sue Wilkins because it would be unfair for one woman alone to have to wait on everyone during the confinement. This did irritate me but it made me laugh just as much – times have changed in more ways than some science fiction writers of the past could predict.

A Fall of Moondust is a thoroughly entertaining disaster adventure from start to finish, the intense drama (and it is indeed most intense) set off enjoyably by the human drama played out within the Selene. I could not put it down.

The Machine by James Smythe

Publisher: Blue Door
Pages: 328
Year: 2013 (11 April)
Buy: Hardback, Kindle
Source: Review copy

Review
James Smythe is a fascinating young author. Three books in under three years and each unique. Where they do compare, though, is in their original voice, their imagination and their sheer audacity. There’s also the fact that each is really rather brilliant. After The Testimony (one of my favourite books of 2012) and The Explorer, we now have The Machine. As the cover suggests, there are links here to Frankenstein, and just as with that novel, the story of The Machine is less about the ‘monster’ than the humanity of those who have made it what it is.

The Machine is set on the Isle of Wight in a near future in which global warming has seared the skies. The heat alternates with rare monsoons; dry hard land, reflecting the sun, competing with floods and deluge. The heat has altered the mood. Now gangs of hoodie teens loiter and frighten, more than ever, daring each other to lunatic jumps from the sheer cliffs above the sea. School is almost uncontrollable. Beth is one of the teachers, living in flats, to all observers a single woman. One day she takes awkward and cumbersome delivery of three pieces of ‘exercise equipment’, the bits arranged by the delivery men like giant tetris. This is the Machine, an illegal object, a store of memories, once thought to be the saviour of the traumatised or the demented, a store for their memories, but instead proving to be their end. Beth’s husband Victor had been the victim of early experiments. Now she wants to use the Machine to put her husband back together.

We don’t stray far from Beth’s mind. There are no speech marks and there can be few breaks. There are shifts, both in physical and mental place. This isn’t especially easy to follow at the beginning and I did regret the loss of the speech marks. I soon got used to their absence, though. By the end I could understand why. This is, after all, a novel about Beth and her world. The outside is kept at bay. She does interact with it, not always by choice, and other voices interrupt her efforts to rebuild Victor – the Hoodies, a Christian friend and others. But she is determined in her focus. Nevertheless, the pressure of the outside builds and is reflected in storms or white heat or the hum from the Machine. There are moments of fear here. Expect to shiver.

The Machine is a clever and charismatic novel. It is a puzzle, as the cover suggests, and so the beginning makes little sense until you put more and more of the pieces together. The second half is very hard to put down and by the end I was on the edge of my seat and ready to applaud the author. Smythe deserves full credit for creating such a believable and real female protagonist as Beth. Also, the mix of the ordinary and extraordinary is quite wonderful, as are the locations. You can smell the sea, feel the vertigo on the cliffs, flinch from the heat.

James Smythe does intrigue me. It’s difficult to approach any of his books with expectations of what they will contain. The only surety is that they will be very good indeed and that science fiction will get a twist. The Testimony is such a favourite novel of mine, it’s hard for any of its successors to beat it for me and The Machine didn’t manage it any more than the excellent The Explorer did but that can hardly be a criticism. It’s more a tribute to the genius of The Testimony and its author. I didn’t engage emotionally with The Machine, I found it too consciously clever for that, but I was utterly fascinated by it.

2013 is proving to be such a rich year for books. Here is another novel that not only breaks free of its genre but demands your attention. A highlight of the year I am sure.

The Machine is out on 11 April.

Other reviews of James Smythe novels
The Testimony
The Explorer

Iain M. Banks – time to let him know what he means to us

Today’s announcement by Iain (M.) Banks that he has terminal cancer knocked me for six. While years ago I read and enjoyed and creased my brows over some of his earlier non M. works, his Culture novels more recently not only relit my long-extinguished fire for science fiction but made it joyful and mind-expanding. As many know, I am a sucker for novels with spaceships in them but nobody does spaceships like Iain M. Banks. He doesn’t just give them a name, he gives them a mind and personality that either makes you want to leap aboard and hang on for the ride or take pot shots and smash them into oblivion.

But here is science fiction that combines vision and art with accessibility and wonder. The contrary narratives of Use of Weapons for example, moving time in different directions, is awe inspiring and challenging. The perfect mix for a reader that wants the very best.

We’re fortunate to be given the time and chance to let Iain M. Banks know just what he means to us. And that’s an awful lot. We can leave a message for him here.

Arthur C. Clarke Reading Challenge 2013 – March: Childhood’s End

The March Arthur C. Clarke 2013 Reading Challenge book is Childhood’s End published in 1954 and now available from Gollancz.

‘Blotting out the light from the stars they had linked so effortlessly, the silent ships hang suspended over the great cities of Earth… and a long and bloody chapter of history comes to an end. Armed with a staggering power and an infinite wisdom the invaders from outer space shock Earth into submission – but what is their purpose? Breath-taking in its imaginative sweep, this brilliant story explores the distant reaches of space, tells of the last generation of Man – and of the Last Man himself.’

Review
Mankind is about to reach for the stars but at this moment of technological breakthrough in the mid 20th century, shadows fall across the city of the world – alien starships. Their inhabitants, the Overlords, led by Karellen, appear benign. Hidden from curious human eyes and communicating through one man only – Stormgren – the Overlords establish a series of laws which, over a generation or two, create a near Utopian existence. Independent nations are no more, the inhabitants are unified, war is on the way to being forgotten, the planet itself is cared for. But, even though humans are allowed to settle the moon, they are forbidden the stars. They are also forbidden, as is Stormgren even, to look at the Overlords, although the alien masters finally relent and announce that they will appear to humans but not for fifty years.

Childhood’s End is a story of the progress of humanity over a period of about 200 years. It tells of a series of individuals, including Stormgren, who have to adapt to life under alien control – during its early days when rebellion was common, to much later when most men and women have become comfortable in this peaceful existence but some have a need to exert their artistic and cultural independence. A colony is established, New Athens, peopled by artists and composers, but this is the last flowering of humanity. This is a tale of evolution and change. With the Overlords looking on, humans are almost like ignorant, determined lemmings, rushing towards a precipice, unstoppable, not comprehending, doomed – even pitiful.

There are memorable characters – Stormgren, so desperate to look at an Overlord; Rupert Boyce, a generation later, fascinated by wild animals who entertains Overlords in his home and library; Jan Rodricks, a modern-day Jonah, more curious than any to learn the truth about these visitors. And then there are the Overlords themselves. Once they are revealed after the promised fifty years, the relationship between man and alien becomes even more complicated. There is also our position. We inevitably feel an empathy for the humans of the novel but we are also increasingly aware of something more threatening. It is not a simple matter of dismissing the Overlords as benign or malign – it is far more ambiguous than that and the story challenges preconceptions about religion, good and evil, salvation, knowledge.

Written over half a century ago, Childhood’s End has travelled very well indeed. Time as we know it stops not long after the the close of the Second World War and the course it takes over the next few generations does not feel out of place or implausible. For me only one element feels old-fashioned and that is the very secondary role of women. But because this is novel that is more about humanity than individuals (with a few notable exceptions), this didn’t affect my enjoyment.

Childhood’s End is a poignant tale of mankind’s relationship to his planet. It is a deeply thought-provoking investigation of man’s place in the scheme of things. It is a vast universe and it is humbling and humiliating for man to be told he cannot explore it. Its conclusion is enigmatic and mindbending. For a novel of relatively few pages, it is full of ideas and possibilities.

At the beginning of the novel, there is a disclaimer: ‘The opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author’. Arthur C Clarke did believe that man has a place in the stars. In Childhood’s End, however, he has presented a philosophical investigation into our destiny if some great omnipotent force determined a very different future for mankind than the one that Clarke chose to trust in.

The book for April will be A Fall of Moondust.

Shades of Earth by Beth Revis

Publisher: Razorbill
Pages: 400
Year: 2013
Buy: Hardback
Source: Bought copy

Review
I cannot get enough of Young Adult science fiction. If done well, it can make my eyes boggle with wonder as I let myself be carried off to marvellous worlds, whether hostile or magnificent – or both. The Across the Universe trilogy by Beth Revis is one of the finest examples I’ve read and here at last, in Shades of Earth, we have the end. This inevitably provokes mixed feelings – pleasure at discovering the destiny of Amy and Elder, satisfaction that I now have the complete set to reread, but sadness that this is it.

Firstly and most importantly, Shades of Earth is a good final novel. If you’ve read Across the Universe and A Million Suns, then you will not be disappointed. Beth Revis has looked after Amy and Elder. But, if you haven’t read the preceding novels then I advise you step no further. You have to have read these earlier accounts of the voyage of starship Godspeed first in order to see where it ends up and how.

Shades of Earth begins with the decision of much of the crew of Godspeed to land a part of the ship and its people on the longed for planet of Centauri-Earth. Elder embarks onto the jungle planet along with his homogeneous people, now freed of the sedative drug Phydus, and the startling red-haired Amy. With them are the sleeping chambers or pods of scientists and soldiers frozen generations ago, including Amy’s parents. On landing, the sleepers are awoken and this makes for one of the great differences from the previous novels. Having asserted his leadership on Godspeed against Eldest and Orion and others, now Elder has a different kind of rival; a man who has not experienced centuries of life aboard Godspeed and has no idea of the cost that this made on the ship’s crew – Colonel Martin, Amy’s father. In a new environment, on a mysterious planet, with a dominant set of old world masters, Elder and his people are completely detached from what they know, even though they are well aware that this landing on Centauri-Earth is the entire object of their existence. But just imagine how it must feel for those newly awoken.

We remember from Across the Universe, of course, the terrifying freezing process that put the Martin family in their pods for the centuries’ long journey to the new Earth. After reading about that, we’re bound to feel more for Colonel Martin and his wife than Elder can. Elder has other rivals for Amy’s affections too.

Another new element to the trilogy is the planet of Centauri-Alpha itself. Godspeed might have sailed towards the new Earth for generations but in Shades of Earth here it is. The claustrophobic environment of the ship is now replaced by a fertile jungle world, rich with oxygen and – more unexpectedly – signs of humanity. But it’s not long before people are picked off one by one by monsters in the jungle, terrifying and gruesome and secret. This drama intensifies and heats the rivalry between the awoken sleepers and the original Godspeeders. Amy is right there in the middle, caught between the two. Elder has his own battles as he tries to secure the planet for his people. Drastic measures are called for. And now is the time we learn the answers to some of the great mysteries of the first two novels, not least concerning Phydus.

Shades of Earth is a thrilling novel. It takes up the excitement of the previous novels and lifts it up a notch. It brings together the two worlds of Godspeed and Centauri-Earth in an explosion of emotion and menace while being different and original from the two wonderful preceding novels. As before the narrative is split between Any and Elder and Amy continues to fill the heart of the novel – here more than ever she is caught between two worlds. But I had more time for Elder in Shades of Earth. He might be out of his comfort zone but he responds with courage. I was also glad that, although much of the action takes place on the planet, there is still time for Godspeed, an extraordinarily well-visualised ship.

I look forward very much to visiting the worlds that Beth Revis will take me to next.

Reviews
Across the Universe
A Million Suns

Wool by Hugh Howey (Wool Trilogy 1)

Publisher: Century/Arrow
Pages: 576
Year: 2013
Buy: Hardback, Kindle, Paperback
Source: Bought copy

Review
Several hundred years in the future, life is confined within an enormous underground silo. Over 140 levels deep, it is self-sufficient. Mines, mechanics, farms, IT, schools, nurseries and police, all within their allocated levels, with deep downers rarely venturing to the top. Now and again, though, a cleaning takes place and hundreds climb the stairs to reach the viewing windows at the very top. Through them they see a world that is dead, windswept by toxic clouds, a ruined city in the distance, presumably the aftermath of nuclear armageddon. In the foreground are the remains of dissidents and criminals, whose punishment is always the same – they are sent outside with limited air to clean the glass. And they always do.

Wool began life as five individual novellas, each longer than the one before it. Not surprisingly, the online release of the first, in which a good man volunteers to leave the silo and clean, was met by demands for more.

In five stories we head deeper into the silo, learning more about the people who control it as well as those who have reached the end of their tether. Knowledge of the past is banned, questions about the outside are banned, children are banned – except if someone dies and then a fortunate couple is selected and given one year to give birth and keep the endless cycle of death and life turning.

The worldbuilding in Wool is excellent. The claustrophobic, spiralling silo environment is vividly done, especially in the second story when the mayor and her deputy sheriff undertake an expedition, slowly travelling all the way from the top to the bottom, step by step, overtaken by fast-footed porters, trotting up and down the endless levels transporting their heavy loads. The mayor and deputy sheriff are on a mission, almost a pilgrimage. They want to fetch Jules or Juliette, a Mechanic from the deepest deep, to take on the role of sheriff. Juliette becomes the principal figure of the remaining three parts of the book but this second part is especially compelling as we travel the depth of the silo, encountering its societies at the top, middle and bottom, including the villainous IT department

Despite the fact that Wool was once five separate stories, this did not interfere with my enjoyment of the book as one whole. The parts each end at a turning point, making the pages almost turn themselves. The pace is relentless as the silo begins to boil and we begin to learn much, much more about the purpose of the silo, desperate for hints as to its history and on the edge of one’s seat as its inhabitants seek to change its future.

Above all else, Wool succeeds as well as it does because it is character-driven. Juliette, Mayor Jahns, Holston, Lukas and Walker are not the only memorable characters. There are plenty more as the wool unravels and I don’t want to mention their names here. There are mysteries and shocks galore.

Wool is teeming with revelations and it is packed with thrills. It is dense with atmosphere and in places utterly horrifying, confronting a host of phobias. It is also intensely sad on occasion. Above all else, Wool is a great read and fortunately indeed there is much more to come.