Child of the River

I think if I'd not been a McCauley fan and had read that this was a Gene Wolfe pastiche. I'd have been unlikely to have bought it. It's really not too bad at all. Has a lot of Wolfean elements, basically combining the far, far future of "The Book of the New Sun" with the artificial enviroment of "The Long Sun" books. Gene Wolfe lite desribes it well and though it lacks the embedded complexity of Wolfe it does capture a lot... Read Full Review

'Child of the River' is a great novel.Paul McAuley has created an amazing universe, one where the tropes of fantasy fiction interact with all of the gizmos and gadgets of the hardest SF. The protagonist, Yama, discovers that he's not like the others..that on a world that contains 500 different species, there's no one else like him. So Yama wants to discover who he is and where he came from...and why he's able to command... Read Full Review

So why did I give it only four stars? Two reasons. It's the first book in a trilogy, and I always reserve some opinion (in this case, one star's worth) for the final work all together. Secondly, it's not really a trilogy, but a single novel broken up into three printings. This can be somewhat frusterating when you're ten pages from the end and asking yourself, "How is this going to wrap up?"... Answer: it doesn't.That... Read Full Review

Yama is on the journey of his young life from the city of the dead to a metropolis of living wonders on a world that stands apart. Thru this savage, secret & war torn land, Yama must survive to discover the truth about who he is & his purpose in life. This is a saga of Mixed Life. Way up the time-line from Here & Now on Earth. Where humans have become gods, have gone away & been long forgotten. There is no one... Read Full Review