โ Scribed by Steele, Allen
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Hugo-winner Steele's stirring second entry in the interstellar frontier saga that began with Coyote (2002) dramatizes the growing tensions between groups of pioneers on Coyote, a recently discovered world in the 47 Ursae Majoris system. Coyote's first settlers fled tyranny on Earth, so they're disconcerted by the arrival of starships full of colonists sent by a different dictatorship. Unavoidable conflict between the people who want to be left alone and those who need to dominate leads to intrigue, raids and eventually full-scale revolt. Perhaps inevitably (since it was first published as a series of stories in Asimov's), the novel deals with scattered episodes from that struggle, so that characters appear, perform some necessary action, and vanish just as readers have gotten interested in them. However, Steele presents his characters convincingly enough to account for their selfless or calculating behavior, and it makes sense for the story to focus on larger social evolution rather than individuals. In any event, the book's real center is its setting. Coyote offers forests, mountains, prairies, rivers in a panorama strange enough to rouse awe, vast enough to give all manner of humans room to find themselves. Happily, by the end the little war is finished, but this big, wonderful world is still waiting to be explored.
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The settlers on Coyote from the starship Alabama have a problem. Their fellow humans have followed them and now threaten their refuge with overpopulation and authoritarian governments. Under the name Rigil Kent, Carlos Montero is trying to assemble the human and other resources for a revolution, for which Captain R. E. Lee survives as an inspiring symbol. Meanwhile, the Reverend Zoltan Shirow contributes intelligently depicted messianic fervor to public life, with consequences yet to be determined. Those three characters, a good many lesser ones, and the situation as a whole smack distinctly of Heinlein, especially in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), and the book is not entirely free of libertarian preaching. On the other hand, it is full of good and even vivid writing, so readers who don't reject on philosophical grounds the strand of the sf heritage that its proclivities represent may thoroughly enjoy it. Such nonrejecting readers are numerous; after all, Steele has two reader-bestowed Hugos to his credit. Roland Green
Copyright ยฉ American Library Association. All rights reserved
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| | | | --- | --- | | Author: | Allen Steele | | Title: | Coyote Rising | | Series: | Coyote Trilogy #2 | | Genre: | Science Fiction | | Publisher: | Ace Books; Berkley Publishing; Penguin Group | | Identifier: | 9781101208298, 9780441012053, asin:B000OIZU8U | | Grade: | retail | | Length: | 308 p