Customer Reviews

Beyond Heaven's River

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Beyond Heaven's River" is a well-plotted novel, something that seems to be increasingly rare in the world of Science Fiction. Maybe it is because it is a sparsely printed, 250 page novel, instead of some 600 page, mini-script, sloppy "epic". For that reason alone it is weel worth reading; there can be good, short SF novels. Beyond that, Bear has constructed a wonderfully sublime, if a bit overly vague, universe, inhabited by unseen aliens and filled with motivated, imperial human beings. Within this context, a Japanese soldier, from the early 20th Century is an interesting point of view to follow through the bizarre, soul-searching, (dare I say?) epic.

There's something wrong with the text of this edition of the book. I think they dropped some lines in the production process. There are many places where one character speaks twice in a row, and the second is a response to some question or statement by another character, which was dropped. I also found a couple of sentences that just end in mid-sentence. It doesn't make the story too hard to follow, but it's definitely annoying. Not recommended (and I'm going to be very hesitant about buying other books published by "ibooks").

Firstly this book is not out of print - my edition is a 2000 edition by Millenium (a Gollancz brand) and is available on amazon.co.uk.
The premise/promise of this story is typical of Bear in that you get completely wrapped up in this new universe across which the human race roams. The two key characters are real enough and both face serious challenges on a personal basis, and along the way you see a future with nicely painted in technologies and alien artifacts (in fact two of the characters live in a giant alien spaceship picked up at an apparent bargain). The story line passes from WWII to well into the 26th century while remaining true to the reader.
I picked up this book after enjoying Darwin's Radio which is a great read - that novel is complete in that it allows Greg Bear to really complete his story. Unfortunately Beyond Heaven's River is a much shorter story and leaves me with the feeling that "it had to be wound up" for want of a solid ending.

After all that I should say that it is still a good read, just not Bear's best.

This is one of Greg Bear's early work. The reader can already see that Bear is great at developing both an intriguing story and well defined characters. The problem with this book is that it leaves the reader feeling unfinished. Compared to his later works "Darwins Radio" and "Queen of Angels", this is unfinished work. It is not bad, just not finished. Much of the underlying society study that he has become so familiar for developing is missing, although there are hints of it in this book. This is both enjoyable and an easy read. It is also a great book to start with for Bear. It is certainly not one of his best, but it does show his early start and that is not bad.

This definitely shows the signs of being an early novel, but it is still quite enjoyable, employing some nice literary touches. As another reviewer remarked, the book had some poor editing. Lines of dialogue were obviously missing. There were also some continuity issues in terms of the book's tone, but it is very clear that beneath these surface glitches is a strong story and a strong budding writer.

This was a good story but it was not fully developed. There are many plots in this story that were just abandoned and that left me with a strange feeling of dissatisfaction with the novel overall. (Example, when the main characters explore a new region of space, and they find nothing but a piece of a toilet...and then nothing else happens in that entire multi-page part of the novel). The ending was ridiculous and similarly cut short. Perhaps this book suffers from terrible editing, or perhaps the paperback was just badly typeset which damaged the story, but there were many grammatical errors and whole missing paragraphs. I liked the premise of the story, but it was not developed and left me extremely dissatisfied, as if the climax has been edited out.