Old ground
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I guess that once you have been around for a while reading your science fiction that sometimes things can get a little old hat. Not always a bad thing when something is well written or has a subtle aspect to it that defeats the "Derivative" tag. Alas this is not one of those occasions. There is very much an old style feel to this book which speaks well of it but after that there really is nothing to write home about. The "plot" could have been set anywhere ( the jungle, a fantasy world, the savage land, lost world etc... ) with very little science to the science fiction. Not helped either by the main character's annoying tendency to speak in French constantly. Something that perhaps adds a little bit of colour to a comic book character but really grates in a novel. Nothing original or remotely significant - Michael Moorcock did it much better.
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Enjoyable Alternative.
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Reminiscent of the care free action novels of pulp 1930's sci-fi. The premise is a solar system where the inner planets have humanoid life discovered on them. Unlike Harry Turtledove's "A World of Difference", the life turns out to be Homo sapiens with other human culture turning out to be as alien as anything among the stars. The Earth's Anglo-American alliance and the Communist by the 1980s have set up rival bases on a Venus: which resembles a Jurassic era Earth, replete with large and hungry dinosaurs, sabertooths and Neanderthals. A crashed space shuttle and a rescue mission leads to hints of true alien involvement. Looking forward to its sequel for more escapism, "Halls of the Crimson King".
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Barsoom, Pellucidar and then there were the Sky People
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I generally like Stirlings books. I've enjoyed very much the island in the ocean of time series (any more follow-up coming mr. Stirling?), I liked the older Draka series as well and of course the new series starting with Dies the Fire. But this book did even more for me. Since my teen years in the '70s I enjoyed SF, mainly the big ones like Heinlein, Asimov, Vance, ..., but I equally enjoyed also the books from Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter, Sprague de Camp and especially the ones of E.R. Burroughs. Many were the moments that I (re)read with a lot of pleasure the Barsoom stories or the moon-men books. And Stirling has not only dedicated this new work to these great masters, he has masterly achieved to capture the special athmosphere of the originals. Extremely well done, so much so, that immediately following this book I restarted on Burroughs Pellucidar stories! Mr. Stirling I hope we will see many more from you!
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Alternative history on a Venus teeming with life from earth
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This excellent book is alternative history in space with a difference: it it begins in 1988 on Venus in a world where, as in the Martian fantasies of Edgar Rice Burroughs or other works of early science fiction, Venus and Mars are inhabited.
This history of the world of "The Sky People" begins to diverge from ours around 1960 when probes to Mars and Venus reveal first that these planets are habitable, then that they are teeming with terrestial forms of life from all eras of our planet's history, and finally that these include Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens Sapiens. And everything else from dinosaurs to sabre toothed cats. Someone is using these planets as giant zoos for terrestial life forms.
Instead of concentrating on the arms race, the Soviet bloc and the USA compete to colonise Mars and Venus. At the start of the story, both the USA, with some support from the UK, and the Communist powers (including China) have bases on Venus. A soviet shuttle crashes, and although it contains a number of things which the Russians would rather the US did not know about, they are so desperate to recover the crew that they ask the Americans for help. Meanwhile the French have plans of their own.
There are a number of amusing references to events and fiction in our history: one of these is that Stirling has named one of the major characters in this book "Wing Commander Christopher Blair." (For those who never played space sim games, Christopher Blair was the main character in four of the five "Wing Commander" computer games.) However, Blair in this book is definately not the clean cut boyish hero played by Mark Hamill in the Wing Commander games. Indeed he's more like Admiral Tolwyn in a number of respects, starting with the fact that he appears to be a stiff upper lip British type who is not an entirely sympathetic character.
Overall this is a very exciting alternative history/sci fi crossover, which is as entertaining as Stirling's "Nantucket" trilogy and his book "The Peshawar Lancers". So far there is one sequel, "In the Courts of the Crimson Kings," in which the action moves to Mars.
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Another brilliant story from Stirling!
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I have just read the first few chapters online of this new story and it looks as good as his other stories, I was hooked straightaway and I am looking forward with great anticipation to the launch of this new series.
It reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy in that they are building a colony on a new planet and reminded me of some of Striling's other books like the Island in the Oceans of time or Dies the Fire. Regardless, it looks like another great sci fi story and i have pre ordered it. Try S Stirling other books if you like this one.
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