Review Summaries

• Readers respond to the distinctive subject matter and the measured narrative voice. As the details accumulate, the people and settings leave a slow afterimage.

Reviews

• all good

  all good

• A good story, but with some unsatisfying oddities

  I bought this on the grounds of its being one of the SF Classics series. First the good points: it is very readable, with vivid characters, lots of imagination, and an exciting story which twists without ever being implausible. The bad point, though, is that Greenland has oddly chosen, from the early 90s, to write about a solar system that had been disproved by the late 60s. Mars has a breathable atmosphere and canals; Venus is a land of jungles and monsters. It feels slightly odd, as if someone insisted on writing an article on electromagnetism referring everything to the luminiferous ether. This has put me off getting any others in the series. Nonetheless, it is worth getting to know Tabitha Jute: not a superhuman being, like so many characters in Ian M Banks' Culture series, but someone who is trying to make a living and spends most of her time desperately trying to improvise solutions for the outrageous problems the author drops on top of her.

• Interesting but...

  I saw this book on somebody's great sci-fi book list so I was expecting a lot more. Maybe if I had read the preceding books of the series (I think this was #3?) I would not have been confused at points. However, the story was pretty interesting and I wanted to keep reading it to see what happened. The main character is a woman and she was very strong and believable. I may end up finding and reading the others in the 5-book series, but I'll shop around first.

• A lifetime can be years ago, or in a blink of the eye.

  Years ago when I was 18 years of age, I started to read this book. (I am now 50) But I never finished it. It was one of two books in my life that I have never completed and for some reason that stayed with me. I do believe that, maybe books have to be read at a different age in your life, for you to enjoy or indeed finish them. Now that I'm older, it was an enjoyable read this time and one I'm glad to have completed. Mr Greenland, if you read these reviews I just want to say sorry for not finishing it years ago. And also, thank you for an enjoyable romp through the universe.

• Entertaining but is it really a classic?

  Firstly I must thankyou to Gollancz for publishing this SF masterworks series which re-prints almost forgotten gems of the genre. The nostalgia value alone justifies buying some of the books in this series. This particular novel is good old fashioned space opera of the kind that I used to read a lot of in high school (I actually suspect that I read this very book when I was 13 but I can't be %100 sure) It is an entertaining novel which I enjoyed very much although it has to be said there is nothing really new here and devotees of hard SF will get annoyed by some of the dubious science. Essentially this is good quality popcorn SF that will entertain you but not really challenge your brain too much. I have to wonder exactly what makes this particular space opera novel a "classic" in the eyes of the publishers? There are plenty of other space opera style novels that are just as good. Back when I was a young nerd in high school this style of novel was the dominant form of SF so for nostalgia and entertainment I would give it 4 stars but it's not quite a 5 star book.

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