Monday, February 28, 2005

#12: Coalescent -- Stephen Baxter

First in a series, not always a good thing ... I'm always impressed by the sweep of Baxter's ideas, though he's no literary stylist: the content kept me turning pages even when the prose seemed dry. What impressed me most about this novel (and what urged me to pick it up in the first place) was his depiction of the slow inward collapse of Roman Britain; the towns gradually abandoned, the Saxons invading from the east, the gathering of the tribes beyond the Wall .. His modern-day plot thread is also intriguing, dealing with a lost twin, and family tensions, and a conspiracy theorist who's obsessed with dark matter ... I'd have liked more resolution for a couple of the plot strands, but I enjoyed this enough to want to read the next, even though I understand it's more a thematic sequel than a continuation of these threads.

reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place

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