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The Wreck Of The River Of Stars by Michael
Flynn check out website(s): www.tor.com By hybrid, this particular spaceship has a standard drive but was also equipped with sails to take advantage of the magnetic flux spewed out by the sun's solar wind.
With one hand not telling what the other side is doing, plans are afoot to resurrect the disused sails to help with manoeuvring. Did I forget to say that the original captain had just died and his first officer was now running the show? Essentially, this is a character piece story. In many respects, this is almost a futuristic soap with each character having their own problems and how they affect the everyone else on board. Other than the spaceship problems, the actual situation is really viable in any genre. Although author Flynn gives some insights into the characters, we don't really see that much inside their heads in regard to how they really feel about things. The problem of this is caused by the densely way it's written to some extent. You'd continually being fed information that you end up reading just to see what happens but the emotional impact is somewhat sullied because you don't really end up liking any of the characters as much as you should. The fact that there should have been some pressure on the crew as to whether they will get to safety and do something about it seems to be minimised compared to their personal problems. The ultimate tell-tell signs of all of this is when, and I'm not going to give away the ending, there are casualties, Flynn hasn't got the conviction to make you feel the loss. With so much work in developing these motley characters, this is a very poor pay-off for the time spent reading this book. In any story, a writer has to expect to detail casualties some time. If he can't bear to eliminate any of them then other options should be used instead. In a neo-writer's hands, I would have called this 'internalising' rather than letting the reader share the emotion of loss and kick them to do something to sort it out. In this case, it appears someone was very remiss in not doing this with writer Flynn. This isn't a bad book but if Flynn had spent more time in working on the characters within his writing style then things would have been even better. Mayhap, he'll have learnt enough from this story to cover up such problems areas in future novels. GF Willmetts
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OTHER REVIEWS - June 2003
The Mammoth Book Of Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones Cerulean Sins by Laurell K. Hamilton The History Of The Runestaff by Michael Moorcock The Mammoth Book Of 20th Century Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Eye In The Sky by Philip K. Dick Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel: Monster Island by Christopher Golden Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Lost Slayer by Christopher Golden Children Of Dune/God Emperor Of Dune by Frank Herbert Exploring The Matrix: Visions Of The Cyber Present edited by Karen Haber The Tomorrow People 3: 1: Secret Weapon The Wreck Of The River Of Stars by Michael Flynn The Weavers Of Saramyr by Chris Wooding Pure Dead Brilliant by Debi Gliori Felaheen: The Third Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood The Usurper's Crown by Sarah Zettel Prince Of Ayodhya by Ashok K. Banker HARDBACK TO PAPERBACK The Praxis (Book One of Dread Empire's Fall) by Walter Jon Williams Shadow Puppets (Book 3 of The Shadow Saga) by Orson Scott Card
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Now this is an extremely densely written
novel following the lives of 14 characters on a hybrid spaceship,
MSS The River Of Stars, engine damaged in flight on the way to Jupiter.
The
sails haven't been used in some time and there is a dependence on
the engineer's skill to repair the engines sufficiently to allow
a parking orbit around one of Jupiter's moons or face oblivion.
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