WINTER SONG.

WINTER SONG by COLIN HARVEY.

SOURCE: Ex-library stock. 

THE BOOK {According to amazon.co.uk}: The planet had fallen off the map. Lost on an unknown and forgotten planet, scientist Karl Allman discovers himself haunted by an ancient race. The descendants of earlier colonists have reverted to a savage tribal culture of sacrifice, pillage and violence. When Karl falls in love with an outcast girl, he has only one goal: escape. But escape is a distant dream on this nightmare planet.

FIRST SENTENCE {Chapter One: Karl}: Karl was dreaming of his clone-wife, far away on distant Avalon, when the plasma bolt slammed into Ship's engines.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 86}: The sagas never mention laundry, she thought. As they lifted the first of the steaming cloths from the pail to the lip of the wringer she said to lighten the mood, "You never hear of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue wrestling with washing."

MY THOUGHTS: Whilst not a big reader of sci-fi novels (that's Mr T's department) I nevertheless do indulge every now and then and admit to being curious about this one given that I'd heard the planet on which our protagonist finds himself has similarities with a Viking settlement.

Perhaps more for those who enjoy their books full of 'world building' of which the author does a fairly decent job. For those readers who, like myself, are into characters, well, let's just say I found this element of the book somewhat .... unadventurous? The fact that the author spent so much time driving home certain ideas (women as little more than baby-factories, Bera, an unwed mother, a slut, the grim conditions in which Karl found himself and so on) mundane. And as for the dialogue? Awkward, amateurish and unconvincing to say the least.

Still, interesting in that as far as this genre goes I'm used to reading of planets and societies far advanced to our own and in this Winter Song is quite different. Whilst the starship from which Karl ejects is obviously technologically superior, Karl himself biologically and technologically enhanced, the planet, indeed not without its similarities to Viking society albeit with a bit of a space-age twist, on which he finds himself can scarcely be described as such.