Paperback, 390 pages
English language
Published July 29, 2018 by Orbit.
Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless - people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumoured healing powers. Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again - but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realisation about a horrifying future.
Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless - people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumoured healing powers. Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again - but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realisation about a horrifying future.
Inventive alien thriller set in Nigeria, so much going on and set up I have no sense whether the next two parts could cohere.
This book has a lot going on in it, but it's telling that when I reached the end, I was a little upset to let the characters go (exacerbated by the fact that I thought there was a fair bit more, because of a lengthy section of appendices). Thompson has created an interesting set of characters, an intriguing world, and a number of problems that I hope will be resolved in the second and third installments, which I can't wait to read.
This book has a lot going on in it, but it's telling that when I reached the end, I was a little upset to let the characters go (exacerbated by the fact that I thought there was a fair bit more, because of a lengthy section of appendices). Thompson has created an interesting set of characters, an intriguing world, and a number of problems that I hope will be resolved in the second and third installments, which I can't wait to read.
Warning! This review is a bit myopic. If you like science fiction that makes you think and science fiction that is new and different, you should read this book. If your looking for just the most brilliant books, accept that this one is brilliant and just ignore me dinging it a star.
So why am I? Well it all goes back to my childhood ... No. Just kidding. But I have a prejudice against any type of mind reading in science fiction. Thompson justifies it in this novel very well, and I wavered between giving it five stars and tagging it science fantasy, and dinging it a star, but giving it the science fiction tag it deserves. (I'll sort of explain the distinction in the next paragraph, but you probably don't care. See? I told you it would be myopic.)
In the end I stuck with the science fiction tag. …
Warning! This review is a bit myopic. If you like science fiction that makes you think and science fiction that is new and different, you should read this book. If your looking for just the most brilliant books, accept that this one is brilliant and just ignore me dinging it a star.
So why am I? Well it all goes back to my childhood ... No. Just kidding. But I have a prejudice against any type of mind reading in science fiction. Thompson justifies it in this novel very well, and I wavered between giving it five stars and tagging it science fantasy, and dinging it a star, but giving it the science fiction tag it deserves. (I'll sort of explain the distinction in the next paragraph, but you probably don't care. See? I told you it would be myopic.)
In the end I stuck with the science fiction tag. This is an interesting story in large parts because of an interesting and new-ish "what if in the future?" idea, not an interesting story decorated with old scifi scenery. The latter, to me, is science fantasy. It's not always easy to distinguish the two, because you can have all the standard scifi scenery and make the "what if?" less obviously visible, and you can have some serious interstellar "what if?" world building going on, but only use it to tell the story of Horatio Hornblower in space. (And my terms have evolved over time, so the HH novels might be tagged Science-fiction.)
Whether it is one or the other, I don't like mind reading outside of fantasy, and in general, if there is mind reading in the future, I don't care if it's explained through implants, or quantum, or the lazy "PSI turns out to be real", it pushes things into science fantasy for me. And the less the setting is clearly science fantasy, the more annoying I find the reading of minds.
And Rosewater just isn't science fantasy. It's quite hard science fiction, it's just built up around my least favourite "what if?", so I'm dinging it a star despite finishing it in three days.
