Paragaea: A Planetary Romance [Paperback]

This was a great read. Chris Roberson packs more entertainment value into the first fifteen pages of this book than some authors get into one hundred.

I was a big fan of the "Adventure!" anthology assembled by Roberson, which pays tribute to the great pulp adventures of early serial sci-fi. When I picked this book up and saw that it was homage of sorts to Edgar Rice Burroughs and other authors of his era, I was hooked by the premise. Roberson does not disappoint.

The characters in this book are likable, though some might find them underdeveloped. Lina is a sympathetic protagonist; a Russian Cosmonaut who goes, at the blink of an eye, from being the second woman in space to being lost on another world. Hieronymous Bonaventure, formerly a daring seaman of the British Navy circa Napoleon, and lately a mercenary and adventurer of Paragaea, and his companion Balam, outcast prince of Paragaea's "Jaguar Men" quickly find and befriend the lost cosmonaut and join her on a worldwide trek to find a way back to earth.

Paragaea is a fantastic planet of lost races, sinister and strange creatures, and sweeping vistas that bears close ties to earth. People may be snatched up by wormholes and sent between the two, as happens with Lina and Hieronymous. Along their journey, our protagonists encounter flying pirates, sentient snake, jaguar, fish, and alligator peoples, and an ancient android programmed by a lost race to gather data, who just happens to posses a biting wit and superhuman strength.

The story reads far faster than one would expect from a four hundred page book. The action is well developed and exciting, and Roberson's pacing is excellent. A dedicated reader with a lazy Sunday might finish the book in a day. I certainly didn't want to put it down to attend to comparably mundane tasks like work, eating, and walking the dog.

If I had a complaint, it would be that Roberson's characters have a tendency to an inordinate amount of luck. Still, having them killed off to bad luck in the first paragraph wouldn't make much sense, I suppose. It just seems that even the greatest of obstacles is overcome with little real difficulty.

Still, this book was a great read, and now has me interested in the sources that Roberson credits with inspiring him, most notably the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

*as a side note to readers interested in Roberson and possibly Burroughs, some of their works can be had for free. Burroughs has a large selection at Project Guttenberg, and Roberson has made Hieronymous Bonaventure's first tale available for free download at paragaea.com.

This new novel is old again. That is, it is quite explicitly, indeed exuberantly, in the mold of planetary romances such as Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars books, Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon serials, and Leigh Brackett's work. And, as the author reminds us, the television series Land of the Lost. Chris Roberson also includes buried references to many other SF books, and he grounds his story in at least vaguely (if not very) plausible speculative science. The end result is quite a lot of fun.

The main character is Akilina Chirikov, called Leena, a Soviet cosmonaut who is supposed to become the second woman in space, after Valentina Tereshkova. But her Vostok capsule encounters an anomaly, and she finds herself in another dimension, on a very Earth-like world -- but quite different.

She is quickly captured by intelligent jaguar men, and as quickly rescued by another jaguar man and a human. Fortunately for her, the jaguar man, Balam, and the human, Hieronymus Bonaventure, having little else to do, agree to help her in her quest to find a way back to Earth. She feels she must fulfill her duty to the Soviet people by reporting on this new land.

The rest of the story is a fairly typical quest, taking Leena and her companions around the whole continent of this world called Paragaea. The world is inhabited by many varieties of "metamen": jaguar hybrids like Balam, seal men, crocodile men, etc., as well as humans native to Paragaea and others who came through gates such as Leena. For instance, Hieronymus was a 19th Century British sailor. In rather Vancean fashion, the travellers encounter a wide variety of cultures. They are often forced to fight for their lives. They gather and lose additional comrades, including an immortal android of sorts, a seal man, and a human descended from a group which once ruled Paragaea.

Inevitably they are led to the mysterious city of Atla, perhaps the oldest city on Paragaea. There Leena hopes to find the secret to travel back to Earth, while Balam, it turns out, encounters his long lost daughter. And Hieronymus simply hopes to find a way to stay with Leena. And the reader learns intriguing secrets about the nature of this world.

As I said, this book is a lot of fun to read. It isn't a masterpiece: the prose is a bit uneven, the action is fun but not terribly original, the plot, as typical with quest books of this sort, is slightly rambling. But I enjoyed myself, and I enjoyed and cared for the characters. Roberson has produced some excellent short fiction in the past few years, and this book (his second novel) suggests he will be producing engaging longer works as well.

In the 1960s Soviet cosmonaut Akilena "Leena" Chirikova orbits the Earth in her Vostok 7 rocket ship when a hole suddenly opens up in her path. Her ship goes through the portal and when she exits on the other side she crashes on an orb she later learns is called Paragaea. Leena leaves the vessel, but rather quickly jaguar men attack and capture her. Before she can figure out how to escape, another jaguar man Balam and his human companion Heironymous "Hero" Bonaventure rescue her.

Hero explains to Leena that he was a British naval lieutenant during the Napoleonic Wars before falling through an opening and ending up on Paragaea. He further explains that the planet includes several sentient species including humans and "metamankind" such as the jaguar-men called Sinaa. Balam is a royal who hopes to reclaim the Sinaa throne from his traitorous cousins Finally Hero explains no one knows how to return to earth because almost everyone believes earth is a myth. Still Leena wants to go home so Hero and Balam escort her on a quest to find the portal back to earth.

Combining an old fashion series of cliffhangers within modern astrophysical theories, Chris Roberson fashions a terrific science fiction thriller that hooks readers from the moment Leena realizes this isn't earth anymore. The action-packed story line never slows down as the displaced heroine gets in and out of one predicament after another with the help of her two comrades and several additional members of a variety of sentient species that join her quest. With humor and a strong cast that make Paragaea and its residences seem real, thriller fans who appreciate the offbeat will want to join Leena's trek to find a way back home.

Harriet Klausner