|
-
Hivemind social net
-
News
- Features
- Blogs
- Events
Calendar
- Editorials
- Monthly
Zine
- Offworld
Report
- Our Daily
RSS Feed
- Google Toolbar scifi
- Movie/TV
Reviews
> Recent movies
> Movies by year
> Movies by title
- Book
Reviews
> Recent books
> Books by year
> Books by title
- Home
- Worlds
- Biography
- Bibliography
- Appearances
- Reviews
- Blog
- Community
- Press
- Links
Become
an Advertiser
- Web
Site Directory
- Search
the Net
- StephenHunt.net
- WoodenRocket.com
- Check
your E-mail
- Non Sci-Fi
News
|
Context (The Nulaperion Sequence book 2) by John Meaney
28/11/2005 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Bantam Press. 672 page paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-553-81357-9. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.booksattransworld.co.uk and www.johnmeaney.tripod.com
This is the sequel to 'Paradox, that was reviewed here a couple months ago. It continues the adventures of Lord Tom Corcorigan, one-armed warrior, freedom fighter and revolutionary. He's also licking his wounds from his battles after frequently called back into the fight and undertakes acts of espionage, more to get information out than to destroy anything. A lady love of his, Elva, is apparently killed and it isn't found out until much later that she was a twin and still living, undercover, herself doing a spy mission which Corcorigan decides to rescue her from.
Interspersed with all of this, is the continuing adventures of Ro in 2142, a legend that is supposed to be influential in Corcorigan's time, 3421, although I'm still at a loss to fully understand why. In any case, this means you have two different tales of revolution padding out the page count.
In many ways, you don't really need to read the first volume of this book to understand what is going on as much of it is ignored. Indeed, it lacks much of the depth of 'Paradox'. With the death of the seers, I'm at a bit of a loss just why everyone is fighting each other, especially as there is no overall enermy. John Meaney writes extremely well but when you drop back to think about what is going on here, certain superficialities turn up that makes you wonder why the opposition don't just turn around and kill Corcorigan, who is really a deadly thorn in their side. I mean, he lost an arm as punishment for theft in his youth before rising up through the ranks and refusing a treatment that could restore it to him. A one-armed man would be rather conspicuous yet Meaney treats him as though he's better that way. As commented with the earlier book, the absence of an arm causes all sorts of problems in terms of balance and such, yet he just gets on with things like any two-armed person would. Meaney rarely even draws attention to the deficiency which tended to raise my eyebrow to Corcorigan's feats.
As a some times absent leader, it is also odd that he can come in from the wilderness, take charge or disrupt assignments by doing them himself. I know the book is supposed to be centred around Corcorigan but this also has a tendency to make everyone else secondary to whatever he decides he wants to do. About half way through the book, it did dawn on me that this was becoming less SF and more a distilled fantasy instead. The only thing that really saved the book was largely because Meaney is a good writer but I don't think this book will survive any serious analysis. Whether all the loose ends will be sorted out in the third book will have to be read there. It is odd that the ending here is finite to itself giving the impression that Meaney was tackling this trilogy one book at a time. Read with caution.
GF Willmetts
|
|
