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Far ahead, bathed in the light of the Galaxy's centre, the nightfighters were rising. Read the first page
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I'm a big ole Baxter fan, and I usually devour them in one sitting, as I did here. Coalaescent was one of Baxter's better books, which went someway toward untiting the cosmic and the particular. A pretty decent stab at an emotionally developed autobiographical novel combined with some excllent biological speculation and a well-painted re-imagining of Athurian Romano-British history. Baxter fans of old like me could get a frission from his references to his sprawling Xeelee future history.
Witht he second novel, Baxter is in space opera-land, a mileu of ray-guns and starships. And he's obviously revellling in it. It would not be unfair to sya that this book really bridges the uncomplicated 'Star Wars stuff' with the more serious Olaf Stapledon branch of the genre. A lot of the fittings are off-the-shelf - galactic war, child-space-warriors, all-powerful and unknowable aliens, military corruption and incompetence, missions of derringdo, the horror of war, etc. etc. Baxter even works in a pointed critique of Starship Troopers. (In some ways the book resembles the movie, rather than the book.)
The genuinely new elements are brilliant - such as the time-travelling bewildering nature of a faster than light war. It's possible other writers have developed this, but I not aware of it. It also allows Baxter to indulge in one his complex, non-linear plots. However, I still felt the idea was undercooked. More on the human cost of this would have been welcome. I also enjoyed the unreconsructed nature of his cosmic battle - World War I trench warfare, dogfights, flack-batteries and everything. Obviously, he's been watching a lot of war movies... And of course, Star Wars is a rather bald influence. Has 'hard' SF made peace with George Lucas?
It all rollicks along, with Baxter masterfully throwing in the shameless narrative hooks. However, I do feel this novel could have been a lot shorter. How many comittee meetings do we really want to read about? I feel Baxter may have worked on some public-sector IT contracts during his time in industry, methinks, and has some inner rage to vent...
Another frustration is the way Baxter throws stuff away, no doubt more completely realised in his short stories. Some of the science came so thick and fast I found it difficult to keep up. Bear in mind I have a Master's in Astrophysics.
The human interest is underplayed, a shame, as this is a growing strength of Baxter's writing, and marks him out in the field.
Finally, I felt the Xeelee were here an overplayed hand. Baxter always kept his god-aliens chock full of negative capability by keeping them off-stage. The danger for Baxter is that they will become to familiar. The more we know about them and their orgins the less interesting, in a way, they become. Baxter is fundamentally a Romantic thinker despite his scientific bent, and this is for me his magic as a writer, like Arthur Clarke before him.
So, Baxter fans will like it. Everyone else would be better advised to read the one before. Four stars if only cos Baxter on an off-day is still worth reading. But then I'm a geek.
And what an unpleasant society it is. Baxter presents us with a hideous centrally-planned dystopia reminiscent of a cross between Stalinism and ancient Egypt, which manufactures billions of human beings ex-utero deliberately for use as cannon fodder in a galactic war that has been going on for so long that the ruling bureaucracy now has a vested interest in not winning it. His protagonists are instances of such human beings: teenage conscripts (that word barely touches the wretchedness of their condition) who have been created to be nothing more than biological components of a vast military machine. Their lives are expendable, utterly worthless, until one of them makes an innovative discovery...
This is space opera on a megalomaniac scale. It's also Baxter's first stab at military sci-fi. The reader inevitably recalls Starship Troopers, but Baxter has rummaged around widely, chucking the Western Front, the Dambusters and even Star Wars into the mix too, and no doubt many others I missed. It works well, and Baxter is certainly not interested in mocking the military virtues that are all his deracinated young heroes have to sustain them. Nor, intriguingly, is he interested in mocking the (illegal) religious beliefs that the conscripts adhere to. Religion is often overlooked by science fiction writers, if not actively derided, but Baxter is prepared the treat the matter seriously; he even has a couple of mischievous (and thought-provoking) points to score in the current `Intelligent Design' debate - although I couldn't find any reference to his intriguing `Lithium anomaly' when I Googled.it. Hmmm.
Exultant is a war story, and its lead characters are soldiers, but I imagine that it is the enemy that will hold the attention of most Baxter fans, for there can be no doubt that the enigmatic Xeelee are a favourite of Baxter's readership. To date they've always been kept off-screen, invisible and unknowable; now, in Exultant, we get a full dissertation on their origins and purposes. It's astonishing, fascinating, mind-bending stuff that proves that Baxter has lost none of his ability to `overwhelm you with traditional sf "sense of wonder" until your jaw drops.' Pure Baxter.
Although set in a different time and with a whole new set of characters the story is as fast paced as one would expect of Baxter. The different strands of the story weave together to keep the readers interest right until the last page... and I can't wait for Part 3.
For readers new to Baxter, you may want to go back afterwards and read some of his other novels in the 'Xeelee Sequence' - at which point you'll be sitting there thinking "Ah, right! Now that makes sense!"
I give this book a big thumbs up.
Set in the Xeelee universe it is almost a "Xeelee Greatest Hits", with references all over the place... Read more
the characters are cardboard. Read more
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