Review for Flynn-ching
May. 4th, 2010 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So it's actually sort of a review and a half.
First the review: Up Jim River by Michael Flynn is the sequel to last year's January Dancer. It was a good follow-up and while the story in the book basically gets wrapped up it ends on a cliff-hanger "stay tuned for the next book in the series" bit that docks it a full letter grade.
The setting is the far future where mankind has been scattered hither and yon throughout the spiral arm of the galaxy. Science and technology are so advanced that no one really understands the basic underpinnings anymore. Travel is via FTL super-luminous "roadways". This section of space has a heavy Celtic influence although cultures have been mashed-up in a surprising ways.
The plot picks up pretty much a few seconds after the end of January Dancer. Fudir, a shattered wreck of a man, has finished telling his story to a Harper named Mearana. Her mother, Bridget ban was a Hound, an agent of the League and she's gone missing. Since she had worked with Fudir in the past, Mearana hoped he could provide some clues to her current whereabouts. Despite his reluctance, Fudir agrees to go along on this wild goose chase. There follows an picaresque adventure though the known space of the League and out into the wild frontier where rumors of an ancient artifact may have drawn Bridget ban and may have been her downfall.
Flynn's mish-mash of cultures is fun and the pidgin words his characters use are neat little puzzles to unravel. The characters as a whole are all pretty strong and their dialogue is witty. In fact, there's a huge amount of world-building that happens between the lines simply in the way that characters speak and interact with one another.
So, despite the last couple of paragraphs, I'd certainly recommend Up Jim River (and certainly the previous book).
I was so enamored that I went searching for other books my Michael Flynn and that's how I came across The Wreck of the River of Stars. The River of Stars was a mag-sail ship plying the solar system. Time and technology marched on and she was refitted with fusion torches and has fallen to the status of tramp steamer. The Captain assembles a rag-tag group of misfits and losers and then he dies and the ship suffers a rock strike and things slowly spiral down from there.
Again, Flynn really does a great job with building compelling characters. As part of this he lets us into the psyche of each crew member and shows how innocent comments by one is heard as a stinging insult by another. So the bickering, fractious group of people come up with a complex plan to save the ship and re-fly the sails and you can tell from the first 50 pages how it's all going to go horribly wrong.
So I stopped reading it.
But this isn't, because I thought it was bad. It's just that humans screw up pretty much all the time and if I need workplace politics, I could just pay more attention to water-cooler talk. If things go bad, that's fine, but I like people to win. So it wasn't really my kind of story and I didn't want to spend several hours going "no, you idiot, she LOVES you!" to a book.
But if you're in the mood for watching a team of people alone in space coming apart at the seams, I don't think you could do any worse.
later
Tom
So it's actually sort of a review and a half.
First the review: Up Jim River by Michael Flynn is the sequel to last year's January Dancer. It was a good follow-up and while the story in the book basically gets wrapped up it ends on a cliff-hanger "stay tuned for the next book in the series" bit that docks it a full letter grade.
The setting is the far future where mankind has been scattered hither and yon throughout the spiral arm of the galaxy. Science and technology are so advanced that no one really understands the basic underpinnings anymore. Travel is via FTL super-luminous "roadways". This section of space has a heavy Celtic influence although cultures have been mashed-up in a surprising ways.
The plot picks up pretty much a few seconds after the end of January Dancer. Fudir, a shattered wreck of a man, has finished telling his story to a Harper named Mearana. Her mother, Bridget ban was a Hound, an agent of the League and she's gone missing. Since she had worked with Fudir in the past, Mearana hoped he could provide some clues to her current whereabouts. Despite his reluctance, Fudir agrees to go along on this wild goose chase. There follows an picaresque adventure though the known space of the League and out into the wild frontier where rumors of an ancient artifact may have drawn Bridget ban and may have been her downfall.
Flynn's mish-mash of cultures is fun and the pidgin words his characters use are neat little puzzles to unravel. The characters as a whole are all pretty strong and their dialogue is witty. In fact, there's a huge amount of world-building that happens between the lines simply in the way that characters speak and interact with one another.
So, despite the last couple of paragraphs, I'd certainly recommend Up Jim River (and certainly the previous book).
I was so enamored that I went searching for other books my Michael Flynn and that's how I came across The Wreck of the River of Stars. The River of Stars was a mag-sail ship plying the solar system. Time and technology marched on and she was refitted with fusion torches and has fallen to the status of tramp steamer. The Captain assembles a rag-tag group of misfits and losers and then he dies and the ship suffers a rock strike and things slowly spiral down from there.
Again, Flynn really does a great job with building compelling characters. As part of this he lets us into the psyche of each crew member and shows how innocent comments by one is heard as a stinging insult by another. So the bickering, fractious group of people come up with a complex plan to save the ship and re-fly the sails and you can tell from the first 50 pages how it's all going to go horribly wrong.
So I stopped reading it.
But this isn't, because I thought it was bad. It's just that humans screw up pretty much all the time and if I need workplace politics, I could just pay more attention to water-cooler talk. If things go bad, that's fine, but I like people to win. So it wasn't really my kind of story and I didn't want to spend several hours going "no, you idiot, she LOVES you!" to a book.
But if you're in the mood for watching a team of people alone in space coming apart at the seams, I don't think you could do any worse.
later
Tom
