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Ten years on from
the events in The
Long Earth (also
reviewed on this site) and the early pioneer days seem a distant
memory. People have spread over many of the replica worlds
and trade flourishes, thanks to the airships. But inevitable
problems are looming. The Datum US government wants all the
worlds to recognize it as their leader, but one parallel US
refuses. Then there are the trolls, sentient beings or animals?
It is time for natural stepper, Joshua Valienté to
leave his family and lend a hand to stop what could be a very
unusual war…
As with the first book there is a whole series of fat novels
or a TV series in the right hands waiting to explode out of
here. The idea of millions of replica parallel worlds is a
delicious one, and ripe with so many possibilities. Exploring
airships touch on a few with their wonders and we get to hear
of others but a large part of this book deals with the same
political agendas that trouble us today. Exploitation of resources,
a Big Brother government watching and up to no good, issues
about wildlife conservation and how to avoid a war. This gives
the reader much to ponder on, although none of it comes as
any kind of surprise and the moralizing can at times become
wearying when there are wonders to explore. Once again there
are rather too many different groups of characters, many doing
rather similar things and the old dilemma of whether a possible
human in a computer body is still human. As I read I tended
to wish for less preaching about obvious issues and more about
all those magical worlds that seem to have so much more to
offer than a lengthy political sermon.
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