Customer Reviews

Under Heaven"s Bridge

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This book's greatest virtue is brevity, which is the main reason I was able to finish it.

The aliens in the book are completely bland, lacking any kind of personality except in one aspect where a few of them decide they want to break away from the group and go to earth. This is never really explored or explained. Why were they different then the hive mind of the whole? What was their motivation to leave? Why did they behave the way they did to get what they want? We never learn the answers to those questions.

I barely even remember any of the characters other than the main character. The relationships were bizarre and hard to understand, and not well explained. One character who connects with the aliens behaves in a such a weird way that it breaks my suspension of disbelief. The plot was really non existent and the story never really went anywhere.

This is a book I would avoid. It wasn't all bad, and the very end was slightly redeeming but I wouldn't necessarily say it was worth what preceeded it.

This is a chilly little novel, with a rather bleak feel to it, not unlike the Onogorovian landscape. As with many SF books this is a novel of ideas and there's nothing wrong with that. However, although a couple of the characters are reasonably well fleshed out for the most part they lack any real depth, and this, compounded with the absence of any cohesive plot, leaves the reader with a somewhat empty feeling. That said, the ideas are very interesting and some of the descriptive prose is nicely written, particularly when depicting the desolate planet on which the team are based. Perhaps it's because this is a collaborative project that the book lacks an emotional centre. With a greater regard for the human aspect it would have been a much better novel.

A team of interstellar explorers confronts the mystery of the Kybers, a part-organic, part-metallic race of aliens who seem blissfully unconcerned about the imminent supernova that will cast their planet adrift. Some believe that they may represent a higher plane of spiritual evolution, while others see them as a threat to mankind. The debate is brought to a head when a group of the Kybers request asylum.

Authors Ian Watson and Michael Bishop have developed some interesting aliens but are less convincing with their human characters. The behavior of the ship's crew is too unprofessional to be believable and the way national origin determines character is heavy-handed and potentially offensive. Nevertheless, the basic conundrum of the aliens and their enigmatic behavior retains interest.