Customer Reviews

The Golden Age Trilogy

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This is the Science Fiction Book Club omnibus -- a good deal if you find it at a reasonable price. The Golden Age was conceived as one long novel, so this edition is published as the author intended.

I loved it. PHOENIX continues on from the cliff-hanger that ends vol. 1. Phaethon has indeed been banished, ostracized, cast out of the Golden Oecumene, for rocking the boat...

I should stop here and reiterate that PHOENIX is emphatically NOT a standalone. You will absolutely need to start with vol. 1 to make sense of this, and even then, it can be hard going. But worth the effort, and a lot of fun.

Anyway, PHOENIX opens with one of the neatest bits of recapitulation I've ever seen, and most welcome, too, as it's been 18 months or so since I read #1. The writing here is considerably smoother than in the first book, and the story is simpler and more linear --though I'm sorry to say the proofreading hasn't improved a bit (sigh). Cool covers, though.

OK, here's the reliable Paul Di Filippo, if you'd like a coherent, real review: [google scifi[dot]com]

"Wright dances brilliantly back and forth between... romance and talk of tightly woven superstrings and mesonic disrupters. Another thread is classic space opera: The whole contest between the Golden Oekumene and the Second Oekumene rings of nothing so much as the battle between Arisia and Boskone in Doc Smith's Lensmen series."

Sheer narrative pleasure, that's a good way to put it. The first half of #2 is a fairly routine (but fun!) "can't keep a good engineer down" romp --and I'm doing Wright a bit of a disservice, because there are still a dozen neat ideas per chapter --but PHOENIX really starts to rock when Daphne Tercius Semi-Rhadamanth makes her re-entrance, Daphne Tercius being the successor (sort of) to Daphne Prime, Mrs. Phaethon, who's hiding from him, and reality, inside an impregnable VR vault...

Anyway, Daphne3 is bright, sharp-witted, and determined, but Phaethon is so incredibly thick in dealing with her, you want to whack him upside the head. Gah! Their interactions are a delight, even if Phaethon isn't. Plus, we learn more about Atkins Vingt-et-un, the Last Soldier. And move in to Mercury, to fire up the Phoenix Exultant!

What can I say? Wright is very, very good for a fast-acting sense-of-wonder recharge, and PHOENIX is a welcome return to straightforward storytelling from the baroque splendors of GOLDEN-1. And I kept getting the frissons of delight, wonder and strangeness that are the reason I read SF. So, guys, it ain't perfect, but I predict Wright's GOLDEN AGE series will be delighting readers for a long time to come.

Interview by Nick Gevers (highly recommended, Google SF Site):

[on his influences]

"Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe are masters of style, and I filch from them without a twinge of remorse. The men are brilliant. They are the only authors I enjoyed as a child whom I can still enjoy as an adult.

Of the two of them, I have a mild preference for Jack Vance. Gene Wolfe, in fact, is too brilliant for me: I cannot figure out his puzzles. The mysteries in Jack Vance, in contrast, are honest and fair, and the clues are there..."

Most highly recommended.

Happy reading--

Peter D. Tillman

[Note: edited from a review of the original publication, as a trilogy]