Genre: Science
Fiction
Description:
This
novel is set mainly some 30 years into the future, moving further into the
future towards the end. The nearness of the book’s future is germane. It
enables the author to think critically about the state we’re in now, by extrapolating
the state we will have got ourselves into in another 30 years. Said state is so
dire that, when a possibility of taking a peek 100 years into the future
presents itself, there are those who leap at the chance. That’s the first half
of the book: hard SF.
The
second half of the book takes a massive swerve from that path. Much of it is to
do with a rather wonderful Hawai’ian philosophy: Ho o’ponopono, but there is
more which I cannot talk about without dropping significant spoilers.
Author:
This is David Backman’s first novel,
although he has hitherto written many fact-based publications. This shows in
his confident prose. His first degree was in Mathematics and his career was in
IT. When he retired he decided to turn his attention to this work, which had
been nagging at his synapses for years. He has done much research to bring this
book to publication, and it shows to good effect.
Appraisal:
The first half of this book is 5* quality.
The hard SF is first class, the astrophysics plausible; the US politics which
(of course) go hand in hand with top secret, high quality research such as is
described, well explained; the state of the planet all-too plausible; the world
very familiar to a present day readership. (Many of his sources are given at
the end of the book: there are A Lot.) The story is fascinating, characterisation
is good, plotting moves at a goodly clip.
Then the story takes, not one swerve, nor two,
but three. The author describes these as ‘a couple of big twists’. This
reviewer found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the twisters. Pace
does not flag. It’s just that you may wonder, at times, if you’re still reading
the same book.
I did get slightly frustrated by the
author’s need to describe every character at first meeting, what they are
wearing on that and all subsequent occasions, and what quotidian thing they may
be doing while explaining how they’re going to save the world. The descriptions
are pithy, but add them all up and it does become a bit ‘here we go again’. I
know some readers like this kind of detail, and mundane action has its place,
and once you’ve started you have to carry through.
I read and watch a lot of SF. And I didn’t
find the timeline in this book (which is crucial) as easy to follow as I had
expected. Signposts to when we currently are have to be sought (they are
there, but using them gives rise to … you’ve guessed it … spoilers). I enjoyed
the ‘Easter Eggs’ hidden (references to classic SF, written and filmic) in the
book that I could ‘get’, but some of them remained opaque to me.
I picked this book for review from the title
The Lightning in the Collied Night, which the author explains at the
beginning is a quote from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Collied? Not a word in everyday use. When I’d thought about it, I was sure it
was basically the same word as colliery, and so it is. Although the
dictionary defines it as ‘dirty’ rather than my own preference, which would be
‘black’. But I will put a small wager on you not coming across it again except
in a coal-mining context ever again.
This novel is worth your time. It is a bit
of a curate’s egg – but then, it is a first novel. It is certainly a 4* read
overall. It is consistently interesting and its plot drives forward. It has
much to say about the way we are, planetarily speaking, living waaay beyond our
means. Because of those swerves I mention above, it doesn’t offer any solutions
– but that would be a Big Ask which is still beyond our current governments and
science communities. It does, however, offer Ho o’ponopono. And that’s just wonderful.
STOP PRESS: a second edition of this novel now supercedes this, first,
edition.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
Format/Typo
Issues:
None in this ARC review copy
Rating: ****
Four Stars
Reviewed
by: Judi Moore
Approximate word count: 80-85,000 words
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