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I have not come
across Allen Steele before, but he is an American journalist who has turned
towards writing fiction. The planet, or strictly moon, Coyote is located in
a solar system 40 light years from Earth. This first book, Coyote
concerns the colonisation of this moon by a 100 people who are escaping from
a totalitarian American government. They manage to hijack the government’s
flagship spacecraft, travel to Coyote, land there and survive their first
year in a hostile environment.
The emigrants are a mixture of dissidents and malcontents with the odd party
activist thrown in. They are men, women and children who have a broad blend
of experiences and attitudes. And this complexity is aided in part by the
author’s style of writing. Originally a series of short stories in Asimov’s
SF magazine, he has retained the interrupted flow by including narrative in
a number of different styles from a number of different protagonists;
including for example, diaries and journals, as well as more regular
narrative. Although this does make the reading slightly disjointed, it does
have the benefit of developing a number of the different characters very
quickly.
All in all this is a very readable first book in a series, and I will be
acquiring the second one on an urgent basis. Particularly with an excellent
“cliff hanger” which sets out the main plot of the second book Coyote
Rising. The third book is called Coyote Frontier. |