Gold onlay
Jul. 13th, 2008 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysAbsence disturbs the mental processes - you get that dislocated feeling so aptly called lost. A lost tooth creates a gap which your tongue is always poking at and taking your mind from other things. It is Sunday and there is no new Dr Who to watch. It doesn't matter that the season finale was a pile of garbage*, I still really want another episode to watch today. It just isn't the same without it.
So to Axis by Robert Charles Wilson. You probably know by now that I'm a big fan of Wilson's work. He writes hard SF novels in settings of physical dislocation and populates those settings with an interesting bunch of characters. That was certainly a description of Spin, the book to which Axis is a sequel. The first book was excellent and quite deservedly won a Hugo. This followup is not bad, but it seems to be lacking something compared to the previous work and other earlier novels.
There are two reasons for this I think. One is a problem common to sequels of books where the strangeness of the setting is fundamental to the setting. That strangeness just isn't as strange the second time around. The second reason why this book lags behind others by this author is that one of his signature characteristics is missing - the aforementioned physical dislocation. Usually, in Wilson's books, people are cut off by some cosmically mysterious barrier or dislocation. This time it is just the more mundane story of people travelling to an isolated settlement and travelling in an underpopulated area. Sure, he is a good author and it is a pretty decent science fictional read, but it just isn't the same.
*Clearly opinions differ on this, but for me, the wit and sparkle of DW was lost in the finale in favour of a huge overdose of emotional manipulation of the sugary warm fuzzy variety in a story that made no sense. Harrumph.
So to Axis by Robert Charles Wilson. You probably know by now that I'm a big fan of Wilson's work. He writes hard SF novels in settings of physical dislocation and populates those settings with an interesting bunch of characters. That was certainly a description of Spin, the book to which Axis is a sequel. The first book was excellent and quite deservedly won a Hugo. This followup is not bad, but it seems to be lacking something compared to the previous work and other earlier novels.
There are two reasons for this I think. One is a problem common to sequels of books where the strangeness of the setting is fundamental to the setting. That strangeness just isn't as strange the second time around. The second reason why this book lags behind others by this author is that one of his signature characteristics is missing - the aforementioned physical dislocation. Usually, in Wilson's books, people are cut off by some cosmically mysterious barrier or dislocation. This time it is just the more mundane story of people travelling to an isolated settlement and travelling in an underpopulated area. Sure, he is a good author and it is a pretty decent science fictional read, but it just isn't the same.
*Clearly opinions differ on this, but for me, the wit and sparkle of DW was lost in the finale in favour of a huge overdose of emotional manipulation of the sugary warm fuzzy variety in a story that made no sense. Harrumph.