The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic--the revised, definitive edition,...
...
"Boneshaker" is] a steampunk-zombie-airship adventure of rollicking pace and...
Very entertaining debut; a combination of classic space opera with spiritual literature, as well as of traditional sf tropes with Arabian Nights derived ones, the novel reads very fast and is a page turner end to end; the plot is relatively straightforward though there are several twists and turns and the style is very reminiscent of Golden Age sf. I enjoyed a lot of the inventive touches from Scripture words literally having power by the use of magical/advanced tech "coins" which contain them, huge winged creatures with a diet of volcanic rocks and capable of space travel, and with a deft touch you can even get a ride on them, in the Roc bird tradition of Sindbad, awesome starships, very different aliens with various "ideological" outlooks and physical appearance/requirements Marc Zemin is a genius young grad student in astrophysics at Cornell who believes he can build a time-machine. Actually unbeknownst to him he will be a focus of great Prophecies as well as (re) discovering inter-dimensional travel - by the means of a "consar" - that the leading advanced races of the Galaxy forbade research into on physical and religious grounds. But now someone is using "consars" to wreak havoc on the rational communitarian Mendoken in whose sphere of influence Earth is located, isolated by a special membrane from the real Galaxy - installed 500 Millions ago when there was evidence life may start evolving towards sentience by the Mendoken who had been around for 3 Billion years - per the non-interference treaties with the other 3 major Galactic races. The Mendoken believe it's their rival and on and off archenemy the secretive Volona who spend their lives in virtual environments and guard their borders with harshness, so a Mendoken fleet with a planet destroyer in tow just in case, visits Marc and when they realize he is telling the truth of discovering the "consar" on his own and believing falsely it was a time-travel machine, they recruit him to help them develop the consar technology. And the adventure begins.
Hard to rate this one. He had interesting concepts, but the writing was often awkward grammatically and the story was a bit contrived (maybe even too nice, if that makes any sense). But should he publish a second book, I'd read it. So three stars it is.
If you like history but hate reading boring history books, this is for you.
Marketplace
Close Window
