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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ever since stumbling upon Eric Brown's The Fall of Tartarus, I was wowed by his humanistic writing and ability to draw the reader into the characters' lives. It was a very engaging read, as was his other novel that I've read, Engineman. Again, powerful humanistic writing with a liberal dashing of technology and futurism. In Guardians, the reader isn't met with technological wonders, rather the world is besought by advancing desertification, extreme temperatures and a shortage of water, sustenance and habitation.
The year 2011: economic collapse
The year 2060: environmental and social collapse
The year 2120: cannibalism
Young Paul of Paris (one of only two inhabitants to remain from the failed colony) survives on lizard stew and water from an old pump station. When he spies a young woman running through the streets, he is instantly weary of the bandits who follow. Tracking their location, Paul later sees the girl missing and a torso being roasted upon the fire, bellies being stuffed. Paul's suspicions were correct; these are heartless cannibals. When the posse discuss a secret underground cache of goods in Paris, Paul attempts to snatch the plans but is captured. Another colony from Copenhagen descend upon Paris to find and bring justice to the kidnapper Hans, one of the posse. They save Paul from certain death... and there begins our story.
The explorers from Copenhagen are on a trek to the northern Spanish coast to drill for water in the dried-up ocean bed. At the same time, Hans meets up with his former colony in Aubenas, France. With detailed plans of a old space port with bountiful provision in hand, the colony creates a team officially head by the powerful female Samara, but unofficially, Hans plays a strong hand in the dealing with the other males in the group.
The descriptions of the deserted European landmass doesn't tire nor do the descriptions of what life before the collapse was like. The passages are full of post-apocalyptic discovery, old-world rediscovery and, as with other Eric Brown novels, human discovery: the heartless matriarch witness an even more heartless man, changing her outlook... the loss of patriarch family spurns his trust in others and spurs his taste for revenge. Death certainly plays a prominent role in the characterization of the small cast, who are all but a portion of the estimated thousands of humans remaining alive on the face of the planet earth.
Beyond the bleak landscape and dour mood of the withering cast, Eric Brown doesn't disappoint with elegant passages and a vocabulary to keep you smiling: sybaritic and scintilla are two words you don't come across very often in fiction. Granted, some of the dialogue is a bit far-fetched and the scenario for the ending is a long-shot but if you massage the history of the years between 2060 and 2120 enough, some far-fetched things could certainly spring up. It may also be a bit too lusty as times, but it fits in the frame of characterization and plays an important role in the plot twists.
If reflective reading and human challenges are your forte in science fiction, rather than the blunt force trauma of hard science fiction, then Eric Brown is definitely your author to read. But... humanistic science fiction isn't for some.
The year 2011: economic collapse
The year 2060: environmental and social collapse
The year 2120: cannibalism
Young Paul of Paris (one of only two inhabitants to remain from the failed colony) survives on lizard stew and water from an old pump station. When he spies a young woman running through the streets, he is instantly weary of the bandits who follow. Tracking their location, Paul later sees the girl missing and a torso being roasted upon the fire, bellies being stuffed. Paul's suspicions were correct; these are heartless cannibals. When the posse discuss a secret underground cache of goods in Paris, Paul attempts to snatch the plans but is captured. Another colony from Copenhagen descend upon Paris to find and bring justice to the kidnapper Hans, one of the posse. They save Paul from certain death... and there begins our story.
The explorers from Copenhagen are on a trek to the northern Spanish coast to drill for water in the dried-up ocean bed. At the same time, Hans meets up with his former colony in Aubenas, France. With detailed plans of a old space port with bountiful provision in hand, the colony creates a team officially head by the powerful female Samara, but unofficially, Hans plays a strong hand in the dealing with the other males in the group.
The descriptions of the deserted European landmass doesn't tire nor do the descriptions of what life before the collapse was like. The passages are full of post-apocalyptic discovery, old-world rediscovery and, as with other Eric Brown novels, human discovery: the heartless matriarch witness an even more heartless man, changing her outlook... the loss of patriarch family spurns his trust in others and spurs his taste for revenge. Death certainly plays a prominent role in the characterization of the small cast, who are all but a portion of the estimated thousands of humans remaining alive on the face of the planet earth.
Beyond the bleak landscape and dour mood of the withering cast, Eric Brown doesn't disappoint with elegant passages and a vocabulary to keep you smiling: sybaritic and scintilla are two words you don't come across very often in fiction. Granted, some of the dialogue is a bit far-fetched and the scenario for the ending is a long-shot but if you massage the history of the years between 2060 and 2120 enough, some far-fetched things could certainly spring up. It may also be a bit too lusty as times, but it fits in the frame of characterization and plays an important role in the plot twists.
If reflective reading and human challenges are your forte in science fiction, rather than the blunt force trauma of hard science fiction, then Eric Brown is definitely your author to read. But... humanistic science fiction isn't for some.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
To be honest, after Engineman I was sort of expecting something pretty special with this, the latest title by Eric Brown, but alas I was left wondering if I was reading the same author. The story was pretty hodgepodge, the character plain and unremarkable and to be honest predictable which made it as dull as dish water. Overall I really was put off this author quite a bit with this offering but considering the reputation that he's carefully built over a few years I was surprised that this actually made it to print. Personally I'd have been happier had they left this one out or allowed a lot more time for the author to correct the many glaring errors within.
If you want to try Eric go for Engineman or perhaps wait for his next offering, the whisper in the wind is that Kings of Eternity is perhaps his best work to date. We'll have to wait and see but I'm prepared to forgive this title if he provides something exceptional on his next outing.
If you want to try Eric go for Engineman or perhaps wait for his next offering, the whisper in the wind is that Kings of Eternity is perhaps his best work to date. We'll have to wait and see but I'm prepared to forgive this title if he provides something exceptional on his next outing.
Format:Paperback
This is the third book I have read by this great Sci-Fi writer. I don't normally follow any particular authors, and while at first I was disappointed to notice a distinct emphasis on bad language and graphic detail that I found absent in his previous novels I had read, it seems that Eric Brown cannot write rubbish.
This novel may be a little slow in getting going (compared to the previous two novels I have read - 'Helix' and 'Engineman' - see my reviews for those titles) but get to chapter six, and it gets really exciting as Paul gets captured and the pace of subsequent events increases.
What I love about Mr. Brown, is that he always includes some kind of 'special' relationship in with some of his characters - an aspect often lacking or neglected in this particular genre by other writers. Here it is the relationship between Paul and Elise - an elderly woman who sort of 'brings him up'.
This story is set in the future of course, but unlike the two previous books I have read by Eric, this is not set on another planet - but a future world on earth where most countries have become desert-like.
There's lots of excitement with the same standard one has come to expect from this exceptional writer - and the tempo of this excitement is increased dramatically towards the last hundred or so pages.
Highly recommended to all Sci-Fi readers!
This novel may be a little slow in getting going (compared to the previous two novels I have read - 'Helix' and 'Engineman' - see my reviews for those titles) but get to chapter six, and it gets really exciting as Paul gets captured and the pace of subsequent events increases.
What I love about Mr. Brown, is that he always includes some kind of 'special' relationship in with some of his characters - an aspect often lacking or neglected in this particular genre by other writers. Here it is the relationship between Paul and Elise - an elderly woman who sort of 'brings him up'.
This story is set in the future of course, but unlike the two previous books I have read by Eric, this is not set on another planet - but a future world on earth where most countries have become desert-like.
There's lots of excitement with the same standard one has come to expect from this exceptional writer - and the tempo of this excitement is increased dramatically towards the last hundred or so pages.
Highly recommended to all Sci-Fi readers!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Entertaining Space Opera
I should start to state I am a fan of Eric Brown. The Guardians of the Phoinix is his latest work and I was very excited when I started to read this post apocalyptic coming of age... Read more
Published 16 months ago by cybermage.se
The End of the World, Now With Added Obvious
The end of the world again, is it?
Well, at least this time it's not grey.
Saying veteran sci-fi author and erstwhile genre reviewer for The Guardian Eric... Read more
Well, at least this time it's not grey.
Saying veteran sci-fi author and erstwhile genre reviewer for The Guardian Eric... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Niall Alexander
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