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| Cover art by Mark Salwowski |
| THE SKY ROAD Ken MacLeod NY: TOR, October 1999 |
Rating: 4.5 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-312-87335-8 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-312-87335-2 | 291pp. | HC | 24.95 | |
One of the things that goes into making a story readable is the author's description of what surrounds his or her characters — the environment in which they play out the drama: Atmosphere. Background. Color. Whatever you choose to call it, this is how you create it:
The late train from Inverness glided down the glen, sparks from the overhead wire flaring in the twilight, and vanished behind the first houses. A minute later I could hear the brief commotion as it stopped at the station, a few streets away. The clouds and the tops of the hills glowed pink, the same light reflecting off a solitary airship, heading west. Few lights were on in the town — half past ten in the evening was far too early for that — but the houses that spread up the side of the glen and along the shore were beginning to seem as dark as the pine forest that began where the dwellings ended. Farther up the great glen the side-lights and tail-lights of vehicles traced out the road's meander, and the dark green of the wooded hillsides met the bright green of the lower slopes, field joined to field, pasture to pasture all the way to where the haunches of the hills hid the view, and the land was dark. Somewhere far away, but sounding uncannily close, a wolf howled, its protracted, sinister note clearly audible above the sounds of the town and the revelry of the fair. – Page 8 |
This novel is set in a time several centuries after our own. It interleaves a narrative of that far-future present with one of its ancient history — roughly the year 2059 by our calendar. The former is mediated by a historian who is also the narrator. He is a metalworker on the project to build the ship. Not much is revealed about this until the end, but it's always clear that it is a spaceship.
The tale begins during a time of celebration. The narrator, Clovis colha Gree, sees a stranger — a woman named Merrial — across a crowded plaza, and one of those things ensues. But it's not just one of those things,1 and the narrative concerns itself mainly with the sociopolitics of the two eras: its own present, which is defined mainly by the interaction of Clovis's group with the tinkers (engineers, approximately) of which Merrial is one; and the complex machinations of its past, dominated by the role of Myra Godwin-Davidova, whom Clovis knows as the Deliverer. Being a student of history, Clovis knows more than most about her; but he still has only half the truth.
I won't say much about the ebb and flow of dramatic events. There are wheels within wheels, and plenty of action to keep things moving along. A technology better than our own2 drives events in important ways, in both time periods; but, as always, people remain the most important drivers. It is not easy to follow the plot, because this novel apparently derives from some of Macleod's previous work although that is not spelled out on the jacket. Nevertheless, he is a good enough writer to keep the reader engaged through to the end and hungry for a sequel. I mark it down one notch because of the gaps left by not having read that prior art, and because I think it could handle the superstition of Clovis's era better. It remains a very enjoyable read.
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