Customer Reviews

Thunder Rift

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

 

 

In the late 21st century, a massive electromagnetic pulse explodes in deep space, out near Jupiter. Sensitive electronics on Earth are disrupted, triggering a global economic depression.

Taria Spears, a New Zealander with Maori heritage, is conceived the very night "Thunder" (as the disturbance is called) appears and grows up in this tough new world. Her parents struggle to make a living, even traveling to China to find work. Taria's mother, reluctant to assimilate to the Chinese lifestyle, is killed by a market vendor over a simple, avoidable misunderstanding - an event which scars Taria for life. Eventually Taria and her father move to the United States, where she matures into an intelligent, well-educated, yet troubled young woman. She is obsessed with "Thunder" and feels a special kinship to it. Probes have determined that Thunder is actually a wormhole to another star system. Recovering from the technological setback, the leading nations of Earth decide to mount a large manned expedition through Thunder, in hopes of making contact with its creators. Taria wins a coveted spot on the expedition.

Once through Thunder, the expedition finds an Earth-like planet (which they dub "Little Sister") inhabited by intelligent, blue-skinned bipeds who use hearing, rather than sight, as their primary method of sensing the environment. The expedition quickly decides that the medieval "Blues" are too primitive to have been the Makers of Thunder, but Taria volunteers to stay behind and learn what she can about these intriguing aliens. Once there she must confront the unfathomable customs of the Blues, while striking a balance between the demands of her superiors and her ever-changing perceptions of Blue culture.

Thunder Rift is an excellent first novel by Matthew Farrell. It has pretty much everything you could ask for in a science fiction adventure - a believable, complex protagonist; a brilliantly conceived alien society; and a well-paced story that never drags. Taria is a character we can admire, placed in situations which test her flaws to the limit.

Farrell claims Thunder Rift is intended as a stand-alone novel, which is just as well, in my opinion. It's hard to imagine a sequel that could top the original.

This is a powerful novel examing perception and prejudice via a First Contact situation. The characters are finely drawn and realistic, the alien society is complex and interesting, and the the plots twists are exciting. Farrell has used an interesting structure, moving back and forth between the protagonist's present and past to deepen our understanding of her situation and her choices. All in all, a terrific book!

...On its own terms, Thunder Rift is a nicely done book. It does, however, require fairly close reading to both follow what is going on and figure out why that matters (which is far from a criticism). It certainly has allegorical/symbolical aspects, but they are properly foreshadowed and internally consistent with the book, and do not result in just a "fairy tale"--which, in any event, is a description, not an evaluation. While I agree that the alternating-chapter structure was a bit difficult to follow, there is an actual narrative strategy behind it that appears to have escaped the shallow reading of a prior reviewer.

Thunder Rift is not a perfect book. No book is a perfect book, and I'm far from an easy judge....

THUNDER RIFT begins with the sudden appearance of a wormhole in the solar system, which wreaks havoc on Earth. Taria Spears is born into the resulting social and economic chaos. Then, at an early age, she is traumatized by the death of her mother. She grows up brilliant but emotionally scarred, and wins a spot on an expedition to explore the Rift.

Plunging through the wormhole in search of it's source, the expedition finds an earthlike planet inhabited by a race of aliens. These aliens perceive their world through a highly-developed sense of hearing, but they aren't technologically advanced. The expedition is ready to write these beings off, but Taria is intrigued.

So far, so good. From this point, however, THUNDER RIFT deteriorates. In terms of their attitudes and responses, the aliens aren't really all that alien and, of course, the humans in this tale are stereotypically paranoid and militaristic. By the time the dust settles, we have aliens that can bring down aircraft (even spacecraft) with a mysterious sonic power and that metamorphose into marine creatures that can "sing" open a wormhole in interstellar space. In short, what starts as in interesting little tale degenerates into a preposterous melodrama.

If you can suspend your disbelief enough to swallow all this, THUNDER RIFT is a mildly entertaining read. It's no more than that, though.

This is a very innovative, well written work by Matthew Farrell. His characters are believeable to me and the plot twists rather nicely at the end. The main thing that sold me on this book was the Blues, the aliens. Farrell definately knows how to write alien aliens. These were not creatures with the same agendas and motivations humans often expect to see in other races, mirroring their own. They were clearly un-human. The thickness with which the alien culture has been created is fascinating.

It may be true there are some things that remind one forcibly of Arthur C. Clarke and others, but I don't see the flaw in that. SciFi is constantly speculative, but if plot lines converge for a moment or two it's not to be unexpected. This is a work that carries on the tradition of scifi while presenting fresh, new ideas for the reader's consideration.

This is, in my opinion, a rare example of "literary" science fiction.

This book had a good amount of complexity in its alien society and in the human characterization. If you are looking for other books by "Matthew Farrell", note that this is actually a pen name for Stephen Leigh. He has written quite a bit of other fiction under his own name or under another pen name, "S. L. Farrell."

Matthew Farrell's idea-packed and beautifully written "Thunder Rift" is a survey-team story with a baroquely neurotic postmodernist heroine. His Taria Spears rejects intimacy, disobeys orders, antognizes nearly everyone she meets, but . . . well, wait for it.

The premise is simple: a wormhole, "the thunder," appears near Jupiter, and the survey team is sent through it to discover another gas-giant planet that has a life-supporting satellite upon which live the curious "Blues." These critters are hopelessly myopic and their primary sense is hearing (the author does a marvellous job of depicting what a hearing-based society, language, art, and architecture might be like), but it seems unlikely they could be the ones responsible for constructing the wormhole. Taria thinks otherwise.

The rulebound survey team, composed primarily of military personnel (although Taria and a few others are civilians) meets virtually with blue representatives and eventually (and reluctantly) the powers that be on the survey team send Taria to the surface (for a postmodernist tale it's surprising how 1950s Farrell makes the hidebound survey-team officers--they could have been created by one of John W. Campbell's "Analog" mag. writers of the 1950s). Taria, of course, finds things are not what they seem, at which point the tale gets a kick start and moves on to its swift conclusion.

Notes and asides: Farrell anticipates certain objections readers might have and tosses in an appendix to deal with them, and you get the sense that an editor insisted upon this. With more time (and skill--this is apparently Farrell's first novel) the details listed there could have been worked into the main story. And whatever did happen to Ensign Coen? Did I miss something?

When I first picked this book up, I was looking forward to a wild, fun and (dare I say it) shallow sci-fi romp through space and alien encounter. What I got was that, yes, in very small quantities, and about two hundred pages too many on an alien society not interesting enough to write twenty pages on. There are a few moments that are awe-inspiring, but the fact is nothing in this book is incredibly original or fresh. Whenever an exciting idea comes along, it is weighed down by a lot of lovey-dovey irrelevance. So if you're like me and don't want your Arthur C. Clarke being distracted by V.C. Andrews, then skip this one.

Some of the language and sexuality in the book was not totally necessary and did not add to the overall arc of the story nor did it serve to flesh-out the characters. Also, how many times did I have to read about her tragic experience in China? The setup was too obvious and aside from the final twist at the end, nothing was a surprise. On the positive side, the issues of culture, reality, and perception are all EXTREMELY well developed and explored. Sometimes Mr. Farrell beats you over the head with the message when a simple phrase would do, but all in all, this book was a good, quick read. It took me a little less than a day to finish, but it's been in my head for several days now, which is always a good sign.

Not a bad book, not a great book. Just decent.

The basic idea is a ship full of soldiers and scientists exploring a nearby region of space. The soldiers are predictably aggressive and paranoid, and the scientists are incredibly uninterested in the first contact with an alien culture. (Once they determine that an intelligent species isn't the one they were looking for, they all totally lose interest. Hello?)

Unlike many reviewers, I didn't find the "blues" especially different from humans. The author tried very hard to make them different, but they're no more alien than the folks in an ethnically different part of town.

The book tries to surprise you by setting things up one way and then having them turn out to be something very different. The set up is so clumsy that the end is revealed at the beginning. (Assertions made about a certain phenomenon come to mind.)

The plot progressed well, and the main character was well developed. An interesting read, but not a very deep one.