BOOKS : Coalescence by Baxter
This was a sci-fi novel I bought for my holiday (wanted light reading - all my other books at the moment are hard cover 'real' novels).
It is a well written story about a woman during the collapse of roman britain who decides to make sure her family survive forever. She does this by creating a system, much like the famous naked mole rats, where the family becomes very closely related (only three breeding mothers for all 10,000 children) and so far more loyal and 'insect society like' than normal humans.
He touches on some nice ideas, and explores the central theme well. He has a nice closing gambit where he theorises about the possibilities of other insect societies on earth and how they would react to finding out about other groups.
BUT
It felt like I was reading a history text book. The majority of the book was either about ancient britain (we followed a roman road to londinium), ancient rome (there was a constant flow of wheat into Rome due to the vast numbers of people there and the dole, a social security system where the weakest people would get free bread) and modern rome (Mussolini created this road from the colleseum to his palace so he could gaze upon it when he woke in the morning).
Great, so you can research, and you've done it well, but god it's dry! Not a lot really happened iun the book, but he managed to fill a lot of pages with that historical stuff (Not that I don't like historical stuff, but if it gets in the way of the story, get rid of it!)
By the end of the book it all pissed me off a bit, but if you think that's something you would like, then I would thorougly recommend it as the writing, characters, themes and premise of the book are great. (That means you, Mark and Ash)
It is a well written story about a woman during the collapse of roman britain who decides to make sure her family survive forever. She does this by creating a system, much like the famous naked mole rats, where the family becomes very closely related (only three breeding mothers for all 10,000 children) and so far more loyal and 'insect society like' than normal humans.
He touches on some nice ideas, and explores the central theme well. He has a nice closing gambit where he theorises about the possibilities of other insect societies on earth and how they would react to finding out about other groups.
BUT
It felt like I was reading a history text book. The majority of the book was either about ancient britain (we followed a roman road to londinium), ancient rome (there was a constant flow of wheat into Rome due to the vast numbers of people there and the dole, a social security system where the weakest people would get free bread) and modern rome (Mussolini created this road from the colleseum to his palace so he could gaze upon it when he woke in the morning).
Great, so you can research, and you've done it well, but god it's dry! Not a lot really happened iun the book, but he managed to fill a lot of pages with that historical stuff (Not that I don't like historical stuff, but if it gets in the way of the story, get rid of it!)
By the end of the book it all pissed me off a bit, but if you think that's something you would like, then I would thorougly recommend it as the writing, characters, themes and premise of the book are great. (That means you, Mark and Ash)
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