I found this the best book of Varley’s Gaea trilogy, not because it is a better story – they are all pretty good stories – not because the characters are better developed – he always does a pretty good job at developing his characters, but because he reined in his tendency to speculate – very badly in my opinion – on future outrageous social trends that he seemed to take so much pleasure in in the previous two books. I’m not against SF speculating on social trends – that’s virtually the main raison d’etre of SF – but Varley seemed to have ideas about future social trends that were quite frankly ridiculous at the time of writing and are still so now. I have no complaints about his technology speculations; just his social ones. I have already grumbled about this in my reviews of those earlier books and I’m very pleased to say that he largely dropped that stuff in this book and focused on the intriguing world he has created in Gaea.
And that story is once again a good well-paced adventure set in a fascinating world. There’s plenty going on and the previous characters continue to fill out consistently and the new characters in this story are well-rounded and believable. My only real complaint is that one of the characters, Gaby, is pretty much one complete deus ex machina. She does stuff that is to all intents and purposes magic and we never get an explanation. The nearest to it is “…and you’ll just have to take my word for it. Because I can’t explain to you what that red line is like. There aren’t any human concepts for so much of it.” And that’s his excuse to have a character that can do virtually anything he wants them to; deus ex machina.
That aside, this is a good book and there is no doubt Varley is a strong storyteller.
And that story is once again a good well-paced adventure set in a fascinating world. There’s plenty going on and the previous characters continue to fill out consistently and the new characters in this story are well-rounded and believable. My only real complaint is that one of the characters, Gaby, is pretty much one complete deus ex machina. She does stuff that is to all intents and purposes magic and we never get an explanation. The nearest to it is “…and you’ll just have to take my word for it. Because I can’t explain to you what that red line is like. There aren’t any human concepts for so much of it.” And that’s his excuse to have a character that can do virtually anything he wants them to; deus ex machina.
That aside, this is a good book and there is no doubt Varley is a strong storyteller.
