Book Review
Written by: Ken MacLeod
Narrated by: James Lalley
Series: The Fall Revolution #2
Genres: Colonization | Immortality | Science Fiction
Published: 26th of March, 2012
Length: 13 Hours 19 Minutes
Listen to Samples:
Description
Life on New Mars is tough for humans, but death is only a minor inconvenience. The machines know their place, the free market rules all, and only the Abolitionists object. Then a stranger arrives on New Mars, a clone who remembers his life on Earth as Jonathan Wilde, the anarchist with a nuclear capability who was accused of losing World War III. This stranger also remembers one David Reid, who now serves as New Mars's leader. Long ago, it turns out, Wilde and Reid had shared ideals and fought over the same women. Moving from 20th-century Scotland through a tumultuous 21st century and outward to humanity's settlement on a planet circling another star, The Stone Canal is idea-driven sci-fi at its best., making real and believable a future where long lives, strange deaths, and unexpected knowledge await those who survive the wars and revolutions to come.
Morgan Hobbes | |
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| Reviewed: 2020-12-31 | |
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Expertly Weaving the Past and Future Together
The Stone Canal by Ken Macleod is book 2 of "The Fall Revolution" series, and one I've read in paperback and Kindle form and now experienced in its audio form. The books in this series, starting with The Star Fraction (previous review), are some of my all-time favorites that frequently get another reading.Of the three, this is probably my favorite. MacLeod expertly weaves together a backstory for a minor character in The Star Fraction who becomes the main protagonist in this one. Jon Wilde tells the story of how he met David Reid, the man responsible for his death.
It starts with Wilde waking up on New Mars after his death, next to... well, that would be spoilers! The starting sentence sets the scene: "He woke, and remembered dying." Fantastic.
So chapter to chapter, we skip from the far future world of New Mars to the (subjectively) near past starting in the 70s and the radical political ideas of the time with the university student unions. Less "in your face" political views (though, there are still plenty of discussions around it) - it's more deftly woven into the fabric of the story.
The story slowly unfolds as MacLeod brings the past and the "present" together in a compelling story that looks deep into what it means to be human and how that might play out in a world where the human mind is uploaded, transferred, and even copied.
Narrated by James Lalley, a different narrator to the first, but this makes sense. The story, while in the same universe as the first, is told from the perspective of a different character. It's not mandatory to have read the first book, but you will find it fills in some of the gaps. This book, when it reaches the events of the first, skips past these with only a cursory nod.
James Lalley's performance was polished, and I found him enjoyable to listen to. I did find he read a tad slow, but perhaps that had more to do with me intimately knowing the story. A quick bump of the playback speed sorted that out.
All up, a great addition to The Fall Revolution series, and as I mentioned, probably my favorite.