Customer Reviews

Faraday's Orphans

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I loved Wood's previous book so I was excited to read another of her novels. "Faraday's Orphans" is as different from "Looking for the Mandi" as night is from day. I don't mean it is not a good book, but it is a harsher and less comfortable book.

It is hard to really like either of the two central characters. Berk Nielsen is self centered and immature,despite having been raised with the world at his feet. Sadonya is self centerd and immature, but she is 13 and has raised her self in the middle of a constant gang war. These two do not even like each other. The only thing that unites them when they are forced together is the feeling that they deserve better, and the sheer willpower to rip life out of the tangled hell of a post apocolyptic future.

The main narritive of this book deals with helecopter pilot Berk's quest to find himself, or to at least make a name for him self, so he can keep flying and not get a "real" job. Berk's life is set against a really well visualized post-ecocolapse east cost. Wood creatively blends some standards from the 'end of the world' genera and tells a good story. You like, and even feel sorry for, Berk at the beginging of the book. As the story progressed be become less and less likeable, when forced to survive in the wilds he can, but he looses his a little bet of his soul to do it. He realizes this, and does not seem to care. Contrasted to "The Brethern" who live in the harshed part of the outside and yet are humanity at it's best he looks especially bad.

This book does not have the romace subtext that helped make "Looking for the Mandi" so fun. It could have used something like that to soften and humanise its characters. It also has an unexpectedly bleek ending, but that may be part of the point of the book.

As a Queen City native I was happy to see that for once our city fathers planned ahead. In this book Cicninnati survives the end of life as we know it

This novel incorporates one of the coolest postapocalyptic settings I've seen. The apocalypse event is different and fascinating, and the environment and society in aftermath are believable. There's also a really cool mutation, though it doesn't get used nearly enough in the plot.

As well, the novel is character-driven and includes some nice, dark bits of characterization. Sadonya is one of the ugliest, most repulsive, most vividly written savages one could hope to see, and Berk's psychological twists are well done.

So it was a huge disappointment to get to the end and find this was basically a libertarian political screed. Berk makes the choice not to help his society, not to do the hard work and pay his dues. Instead, he sets off on his own, with the disgusting Sadonya, probably to die, but hey, to die free! It's poisonous ideological nonsense, and the author offers no criticism of Berk's selfishness. In fact, the character, Cormack, whose more cooperative ideas seem reasonable and helpful to their beleaguered society, is presented negatively throughout.

The good qualities of this novel, which also include occasional lovely sentence-level writing, couldn't outweigh its immature philosophy for me.

After the compelling characters and vulnerable men in "Looking For The Mahdi," I wasn't surprised to find both present in "Faraday's Orphans." I'm always searching for character-directed science fiction, and N. Lee Wood is a real find, but she seems to lose control of her plots toward the ends of her novels. In the two I've read, the action gets loose after a certain point in the final quarter. I found the plot logical until the ending, which seemed less thought out. The setting is extraordinarily vivid considering I don't remember vast chunks of description. And although the bare bones of the plot make it sound like Mad Max, the little reminders that this blighted landscape is unnatural, is the destruction of a fertile river valley, keep its setting unique. As a Philadelpian, I'm amused to see the city in a novel. It's rare to see my hometown in a book or movie and I'm just tickled to see that, as usual, Philly is portrayed as a post-apocalyptic hellhole.

This tale is one man's journey into Hell--and Ms. Wood drags the reader along for the ride. Abuse, violence and hopelessness fill the pages. What was the author of the excellent "Looking for the Mahdi" thinking?

The book begins well. I'll give the title 4 stars, a literate reference to the phenomenon that nearly destroyed the world. The premise is interesting: the earth loses its magnetic field, the ozone layer disappears and the world turns into a broiling desert. A few cities survive under environmental domes. The "hero", Berk, is searching for arable land and precious resources such as oil. A promising start, but then Berk loses his helicopter in the ruins of Philadelphia and the story degenerates into violence and chaos.

Sadonya is at least an interesting character, especially for her skills as a "cook". But she doesn't have any other redeeming characteristics. True, she's a product of her environment, but like Berk I found it impossible to like her, and I was only marginally interested in her survival.

So much violence, and much of it pointless. Is Berk's rape of his wife really necessary to carry the story along? And do we really have to know all the details of the Rangers' torture of prisoners?

There were a few memorable characters (I particularly liked Charon, which is why this book gets 3 stars instead of 2), the setting was wonderfully detailed and the writing is up to Wood's usual high standard. But in the end this is a bleak, hopeless story. I get enough of that out of the newspapers.

Having glimpsed at N. Lee Wood's "Looking for the Mahdi" years ago, I was delighted to take a look at her second novel, "Faraday's Orphans" (The title is a bit misleading, though it refers to the magnetic collapse of American civilization caused by "The Shift" sometime in the 21st Century.). It is a spellbinding tale set in a largely wild, untamed northeastern United States, describing the adventures of Berk, a helicopter pilot based in the domed city of Pittsburgh, one of the few remaining outposts of civilization. Trapped unexpectedly in the ruins of Philadelphia, Berk must make an uneasy alliance with the almost feral Sadonya, a barely adolescent young girl with a penchant for "cooking" a wide variety of drugs. Together, they will embark on a perilous journey by foot back to the domed city of Pittsburgh, encountering gentle, pastoral nomads descended from the Mennonites and Amish folk of central Pennsylvania and the savage, cannibalistic Rangers, before finding sanctuary within the domed city itself. The novel's unexpected twist of an end may catch readers by surprise, but is undoubtedly quite consistent with the personalities of Berk and Sadonya. Although I found "Faraday's Orphans" a delightful read, it is not nearly as engrossing a work of science fiction as any written by Ms. Wood's husband, distinguished author Norman Spinrad.

I read a lot of post-apocalypse novels. This one was a little better than most. I really thought that I was in the ruins of Philadelphia, trying to evade the "baby bucks" and the different gangs, living like a cripple with Sadonya.
It was interesting to see how the two characters hated each other but couldn't survive without each other. The morality of Berk fighting with his dark feelings was great.
Of course, there was some gory details but not much and did not detract from the story.

Perhpaps I'm a cynic but i'm really enjoyed this novel, even the downbeat ending It wasn't the best piece of literature that i've ever read but it definetely was very compelling. Credit that to Wood's writing which really puts you there. Imagine a world in which there was no ozone layer? Earths inhabitants are forced to live in cities surrounded by huge domes that protect them from a merciless sun. Outside of the domes is a vast desert of blistering heat. That is the setting for Faraday's orphans the latest novel by N. Lee Wood. It follows Berk Nielsen, a immature, idealistic helicopter pilot who flies outside of the city on various missions, delivering supplies, searching for oil. On one of his flights he gets stranded in Philadelphia, his only ally a wild child of a 13 year old "cook" named Sadonya. The set up is basically for Berk to get home and of course there are complications. He must deal with the earths 'survivors' who live outside of the domes, the sweltering heat of the desert even Sadonya and himself. Like I mentioned before N. Lee Wood's writing really inmpressed me mostly because on the surface thius sounds like a Road Warrior rip-off but her descriptions of life on the outside and it's people are vivid making this at times real page turner. I wouldn't call this book entirely science fiction because it seems to be very fact based. Her description of this post apocalyptic world is very realistic, even brutal at times. Even the characters are 'real' instead of being cardboard cut-outs. The 'realness' of the characters helps and hurts this novel. it helps it because I was for the most part unable to guess what would happen next and even when I did Lee's writing ability held my attention to keep reading. For instance, the fact that Berk the novels "hero" is a selfish, immature and idealisitc. Not the most desirable character traits in a hero. I doesn't make you immediately want to root for him but it make him a believable (real). And Sadonya, a wild child who survives on her own in the harsh outside world. She is brutal, viscious and and cunning. Again traits that are not traditionally found in you heroinnne. But in a realistic world these traits would be essential for survival. It hurts the novel for same reasons that it helps it. Because Berk and Sadonya are so close to 'real' it makes it very difficutly to care about what happens to them. I also had problems with the fact that Berk and Sadonya opnely hated one another. It seems as though Lee was trying too hard not to have there be any love or even like interest between them. Unfortunately there is very little to make us really care about them. That aside Faraday's Orphans is still a very compelling read. I enjoyed reading a Science fiction story that is grounded in reality. Although this isn't the kind of novel that a 13 year old will enjoy. It's far too brutal and realistic for kids. I'd recommed it to the discriminating sci-fi reader.

This was a better read than the 3 stars I gave it. The characters were very well developed and Wood did an excellent job of developing the different worlds within the book (the domed cities, destroyed cities, the desert)--you were there. Many of the passages within destroyed Philadelphia, the tunnel families, and the confrontation with the rangers were vividly painted and made for rapid page turning. What I couldn't quite get over was the real lack of redeeming qualities in the main characters. Berk was more of a self-centered, self destructive individualist rather than an idealistic pioneer. And Sadonya...you just had to try and understand how a violent and vicious environment and upbringing can create a person absent of any compassion or regard for humanity. If your stories don't need heroes, you may enjoy the book immensely. If you like to root for the protagonists, you may come away a little lacking.

Yes, it's just what the SF world needs, YAEOTWN. (Yet Another End Of The World Novel.) This time it's the earth's magnetic field, which reverses and lets it all sorts of killing radiation. We've got your domed cities, your hardscrabble farmers, your barbarians, and all the trappings. Add in a stranded pilot who has to make an uneasy friendship to get back home, and you've got Mad Max in Philadelphia.

Luckily, N. Lee Wood is a good enough writer to pull it off. Both the main characters are fairly unpleasant people, but well-fleshed out with motivations that make sense in context. The setting is also well thought out: you're never really left shaking your head in disbelief.

A warning: this story has a couple of fairly brutal passages, including several rapes from the perspective of the protagonist. Probably not a good book for a 13-year-old.

I'll bump the story up about a half star just because much of it is set in Philadelphia, near where I grew up.