- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; 1st ed 1st printg edition (21 Jun 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0575071761
- ISBN-13: 978-0575071766
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.3 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,454,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Tighe lives on the Worldwall. It towers above his village and falls away below it. It is vast and unforgiving and it is everything they know. Life is hard on the Worldwall, little more than a clinging on for dear life. And then one day Tighe falls off the world. And falls, and falls and falls . . . and survives. He finds a new part of the Worldwall, a city, more people than he ever imagined existed and a war. A war fought by the Popes and their armies. A war Tighe must join, a war that will take him on a journey into the heart of the mystery behind the Worldwall. ON is a superbly confident novel of a changed world. It has echoes of a Canticle for Leibowitz and The Book of the New Sun. It is a remarkable feat of imagination and sustained narrative drive. Its hero is immensely appealing. Coming after SALT it is evidence of an extraordinary SF career in the making.
About the Author
Despite being only 35 Adam Roberts is a senior lecturer and reader at London University. Not content with editing the Oxford edition of Tennyson's poetry he has also written books on Browning as well as a critical guide to SF.
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First Sentence
On Tighe's eighth birthday one of the family goats fell off the world. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
On Tighe's eighth birthday one of the family goats fell off the world. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of ideas, but unsatisfying,
By
This review is from: On (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
I have to go with the reader from Sandown. There's a lot of invention packed into this book, and the main character is effectively drawn, but then it all tails off into a series of disjointed scenes and, ultimately, the arrival of a deus ex machina (in more senses than one) who explains nearly everything but then sets up a couple of brand new mysteries, and then... the book stops. Roberts fits comfortably into the millenium wave of British SF writers - the belief that novels don't need a proper ending, the obsession with gore, blood, guts and severed limbs, all the trademarks are there. So long as you can get past that it's not a bad book, but it's lacking something.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
World building worthy of Wolfe,
This review is from: On (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
Adam Roberts' second novel demonstrates that here is an author who refuses to be straight-jacketed by the 'normal' rules of hard sf as he creates the most bizarre of worlds and then show us it from the perspective of one of its seemingly most insignificant denizens. Tighe's story is part quest through a setting as bizarre as any in Gene Wolfe's 'New Sun' series, part the story of a coming of age into a true age of wonders. Yes, it's strange, yes it's unusual, indeed almost 'fantastic' in flavour, but it does have a very solid hard sf basis - and there's always been more to science fiction than just robots and spaceships, as Roberts more than ably demonstrates. Give 'On' a try - take your head in new directions.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Very poor sci-fi novel - disappointing,
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This review is from: On (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
I have read other books by Adam Roberts such as Salt that I enjoyed. However this book left me very disappointed. The concept behind the book is a very interesting one but the characters and plot within the book were shallow and meaningless. As for the ending - I thought I had a book with missing pages.
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