But I've been reading too. Some tremendous stuff. Daniel Kahnemann's Thinking Fast and Slow blew my mind several times over. And life has been treating me well on the fiction side of the house too. My most recent read, Chris Beckett's Dark Eden kept me up late more than once with ideas fizzing through my little brain.
So, what's it about, Peadar? No spoilers, please!
Well, he starts with the same SF trope I used in The Inferior. A tribe of savages whose ancestors were starfaring humans, are stuck on a fascinating world, dreaming of a rescue that just isn't coming.
We have the usual, expected cast of characters: the visionary young man with a destiny; the loyal sidekick; the beautiful girl who falls in love with the hero...
So far, so ordinary, right? Sounds like a thousand books you read before? Sure, sure, except that none of the characters turn out exactly as we expect. They are far deeper and more subtle than they appear to be and their adventure is beautifully told, full of wonderful and terrifying moments. As I was reading it, I kept thinking to myself, "This is what it was like for our most distant ancestors when they migrated out of Africa. Exactly like this."
I loved it, although not completely uncritically. The main problem I had -- and I wasn't alone, REG from Westeros made the same complaint -- was that there's a point about half-way through when the story slows to an absolute crawl as the characters recount the history of their tribe in a bit too much detail.
But from then on, it was one wild ride. Highly recommended.