Customer Reviews

Typhon's Children

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I would echo the comments of the reviewer who likened this book to the Pern adventures of Anne McCaffery, and propose another comparison. While reading Typhon's Children, I was reminded of the early novels of Andre Norton and their tantalizing evocations of ancient alien civilizations. Add in scrupulously researched scientific details, fast-paced adventure, and an otherworldly environment so convincingly portrayed that you can taste the salt on the breeze, and you come close to describing a visit to the planet Typhon. The characters are complex, living and breathing (whether out of the water or in it) beings whose triumphs and setbacks the reader comes to care about deeply. The humans who inhabit this world are by turns noble, stubborn, amusing and heartbreaking, while the non-humans they encounter over the course of the novel are delineated with equal depth and compassion.

If one definition of a good book is that it leaves the reader wanting more, then I'd vote Typhon's Children a place on that honored shelf. This is one of the few books I've read in more years than I'd care to admit where I found myself consciously slowing down as I neared the ending, wanting to draw out my visit to this wonderful world for as long as I possibly could!

P.S. According to the latest Del Rey newsletter, Toni Anzetti has just handed in Riders of Leviathan, the second book in the Typhon series.

Wow! How about a contender for the Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards? "Typhon's Children" impressed me... a lot. The science fiction books and stories that make such a large favorable impresson on me are few and far between. "Lord of Light", "The Stars My Destination", "No Woman Born", "There Will Be Time", and "Tau Zero" all come to mind.

Toni Anzetti's (apparent) debut is not about anything in any of those books, but her story of the failed colony from cold, dark, dry Skandia and their fate on the warm, wet, world of Typhon is comparable to them in impact and quality. It ranks as good, hard, science fiction without any expository digressions (thank you, Toni), a real plot, and characters and character development that most authors would kill for. She throws you in the deep end, hands you a skinsuit and a dive-mask, attacks you with tangleweed, a pod of ketos and a school of boogers and leaves you gasping (literally) and near death. And that's just the first scene. The colonists are near the end of their rope: disaster-struck, impoverished, apparently abandoned, dejected, gene-damaged, dying-out, combative, and neurotic. Then things get worse.

READ THIS BOOK!

I read Typhon's Children at the encouragement of my SF book club, but certainly without regret. The story of genetic change on a strange (and unhospitable) world is both interesting and thought provoking.

The story centers on a deaf girl (Dilani) who lost her parents on the oceanic world of Typhon. A volcano unexpectedly became active and destroyed the one existing island where the colony had settled. Life even before the "big disaster" was less than idyllic. Something, either on Typhon or within the colonists, is causing each of the new generation to be born with mutations. Some are slight (Dilani's deafness and webbed toes), while others are nearly monsterous.

The bulk of the book is a combination quest story combined with a different twist on the "first contact" theme. I enjoyed Anzetti's descriptive underwater passages, although some of the varied names of animal life became confusing.

This book ended too slowly, but still left plenty of possibility for a sequel. Plenty of good issues to provoke discussion. It was a great selection for our book club.

I loved it. I think it's brilliant.

Engaging characters & great ideas... an excellent read! Toni Anzetti has created species with ancient, alien, and vibrant cultures that are both beyond the ability of humans to understand and completely accessible to readers... all presented through complex and engrossing characters.

It's one of those rare books that changes the way I see and think about things for long after I've finished reading it.

I hope this is just the start of a long series.

Buy it and read it. You'll see what I mean.

What a great book!

It's not very often you get a science fiction story based on biology and genetics, and when you do, it's not often done well. But not only does Anzetti really seem to know her science, she has a great hand with characters and plotting. And the water world Typhon seems very real. You can almost smell the ocean, and feel the currents on your body.

There are currents on land, too, as the remnants of the colonists struggle with the decisions they have to face about survival and the fate of their children. The children are also interesting characters, each of them a real person, and more than the handicap or deformity Typhon has cursed them with.

The deaf girl Delani was the person I most identified with. Her handicap made her frustrated, but she kept on pushing through, and not always in a nice way! I know I've felt trapped like her sometimes in my life, and you just have to do whatever you have to, to make things right. She was very realistic, and admirable.

Per, the scientist, was good, too, strong and complicated. There's a mystery behind him, and I hope we learn more about him in future books. It's clear that Anzetti is planning a sequel, and I look forward to it.

I won't give the ending away, but I thought that the second half of the book, with the solution to Typhon's problem was exciting and intelligent. It was one of those stories where the ideas just keep getting bigger and bigger.

I would recommend this book to anyone!

This is an awesome book that grabbed my attention everytime I read a chapter. The Author puts you on a joy ride in to the deep of the ocean to the peeks of the volcano's of the Typhon Planet. This planet has an island surrounded by complete ocean, just like Hawaii. Then one day an unexpected eruption occured, which destroyed most of the planets supplies and they are now suffering from defects on birth. This is something very mysterious, and it creeped me out. The story will never end until everything is back to normal or they can find a way out of the planet. You should pick up this book like me, if you are interested in the types of books that related to extraterestial life. This book can become funny sometimes but it is mostly serious and suspenceful. I really enjoyed reading this book at night because it keeps you from sleeping and keeps you reading to the end. I would recomend this book to all the wonderers out there who is dying to read about alienation that will occurs in every planet in life sometimes.

/Typhon's Children/ is an SF story with real characters and heady adventure. The gripping plot deals with alien-colonist genetic interactions, but the characterization also drew me in because I cared about the people (and the aliens!) so much. The scientist Per, the deaf girl Dilani, the alien scholar--I was reading faster and faster rooting for them in their struggle for survival. It has excellent biology in it, and the underwater parts make you think you are really there.

The colonists' world is degenerating through inexplicable mutations. Their little society is also breaking down as they struggle to deal with the deadly aspects of the planet. The scientist Per (who has a mysterious background of his own) goes looking on the Deep for the answer, and finds far more than he bargained for, to the edge of his own humanity.

The author makes the book come alive through the vivid descriptions of both people, places, and events. It is never slow; sometimes the action comes too fast and furious! And the highly imaginative use of sign language as an integral part of the plot is an additional bonus: very few books in this genre bother to deal creatively with such things. The book cries out for a sequel.

I would give the first half of this book 5 stars and the last half only 2 stars. I loved the characters and the events that led them to the planet. Their predicament was extremely intriguing! But their underwater exploration and discovery of the "godbits" bogged down the whole narrative. It read like a "psychedellic trip" gone bad.

Suprisingly, the book seemed a bit thin, not filled in sufficiently perhaps. Was this because there was lots of action, or many plot twists to be told?

No.

It seems so thin because the book is a very deep, insightful look at some of the fundamental issues of life. Certainly, science is science, and there is much to explore. When, though, there is a world to explore by oneself, when science makes anything that is interesting to have, what is it that is worth having?

Original thought of course.

The culture of the survivors is interesting, and while it could be an easy throwaway, it is instead illuminating of values, and how they are shaped by the environment.

Biology runs amuck, but when all is said and done, it is randomness that sets some above the other. Not randomness in the sense of sloppy thought, but luck. Perversity if you will.

That is the true gift of life, where some rise above, and others remain mired on the bottom.

And this small homily is illustrated in a story where there is action enough, and alien (human and otherwise) races and alien thoughts (ditto). Not to mention an interesting world, and the story of the struggle to survive in it.

Read this book.

Biological S/F is a difficult genre at best. Only the likes of David Brin and a few others have produced stories in this area that are understandable, uplifting (no pun intended) and exciting. Toni Anzetti may be a new member of this small group.

Typhon's Children is a very good book. It's engrossing, fast paced and, above all, interesting. New ideas abound: the interplay between the ecosystem in which the immigrants find themselves, the one-on-one relationships between individuals and verious species, and the very personal interspecies alliances between various characters (I'm trying not to give too much away). This is a thought-provoking piece of writing!

I may have been stingy with "only" four stars, but the book does have a least one deficiency which I hope will be corrected as the series (I hope) progresses. I had the feeling throughout the book that, even though place descriptions and character development were very good, some of the best "parts" of this book may still be on the author's (or editor's) C-drive. For example, we don't know anything about the origin of the humans, other than they appear to be Swedish. We don't know anything about the planet from which they came, or why they came to a world covered mostly by water. We don't even know anything (really) about the island to which they fled (Refuge) following the volcanic destruction of their first settlement. Sure, the plot, the "action" and the characters that we have in Typhon's Children are great, but some of this "local color," even if it made the book longer (which certainly wouldn't be so bad), would be great.

Some of the other reviewers of Typhon's Children are looking for a sequel. I'm looking for a prequil. Whichever, I'll buy it and I'm sure I'll enjoy it.