Crucial Taunt review of Crystal Rain

Another review popped up last night, this very positive review of Crystal Rain on the website Crucial Taunt by John Markley:

From this set-up, creates one of the best adventure stories science fiction has seen in recent years. Buckell takes the reader across the world he has created, from a desperate midair struggle with an Azteca airship, to grim siege warfare at the walls of Capitol City, to the freezing North and the lost realm of the old-fathers. Starting with only the fragmentary understanding of the Nanagadans themselves, the reader gradually learns more about the awesome technology of the old-fathers, and about how the planet’s humans, Loa, and Tetol came to be where they are.

Nanagada itself is a fascinating creation, an array of peoples, cultures, and religions, drawn primarily from the people of the Caribbean, where Buckell himself grew up. Technology out of Earth’s late 19th century exists alongside remnants of a past that has become incomprehensible- the mammoth structures of Capitol City, alien creatures that are worshipped as gods, vast expanses of lifeless land that make those who visit sicken and die for reasons unclear to a society that no longer understands concepts like radioactivity and nuclear weapons. The disparities between technologies of past and present create a fascinating contrast of situations- grinding trench warfare fought with bolt-action rifles and steam-powered rail cars in one chapter, a struggle between a monstrous bioengineered alien and a cybernetically enhanced superhuman the next- that fit together naturally in the same story and setting. Buckell also provides tantalizing hints of what the wider universe is like as the story goes on, without going on at length about back-story.

Filed under the topic My Writing: My Books: Crystal Rain: Reviews on July 2nd 2008 at 3:15 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.