Customer Reviews

Where Time Winds Blow

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Mythago Wood this ain't be under no illusion of that. I found that title so so, and was just a tad cynical when I settled down to read this outing from Robert Holdstock.
What I got was a stunning sci-fi novel, the world of which is realised in beautiful and eerie detail.
Set on Kamelios which was formerly named VanderZande's World, this is a planet of a yellow /orange atmosphere because it is thick with choking pollen grains from the indigenous plant life.
To walk outside the human colonists have to wear masks with filters or undergo pretty radical surgery and become 'manchanged'. These are the other human beings inhabiting the world but have decided to fully integrate with it, farming the land etc but have undergone dramatic and even grotesque physical changes to allow them to breathe the atmosphere without masks.
Kamelios has its share of animal life from the tiny Skarl which build impressive coral like structures on the land, to a dangerous predator called a Gulgaroth which will quite happily kill a human being.
Strange fire storms called Fiersigs can arrive unexpectedly and have the unsettling ability of being able to enter human minds and radically change patterns of behaviour, inducing a terrible fear and desperation in individuals so affected.

However, the most striking features of Kamelios are the strange and terrible Time Winds and lesser winds known as Time Squalls.
Get caught in one of these and you will quite literally get taken for a ride. To where no one knows because no one who has ever been taken by a Time Wind, has returned to tell the tale. On other times they are lethal in that they will take part of a person, if that unfortunate should get caught on the edge and leave a few body parts behind. Haunting the background is a figure known as the Phantom Of The Valley, who is usually seen at long distance and never allows itself to be approached. Tantalisingly this could be a survivor from a Time Wind.....
What the winds do tend to leave behind are items from what appear to be from different times in the planet's history, and this can include some pretty intricate and valuable alien hardware. This attracts prospectors from all over the universe to see if they can make their fortune in this dangerous environment. They live in a mobile city called Metal City and venture out across the countryside, usually in teams looking for exotic hardware left behind by the Time Winds.

One such team is led by Lena Tanoway who is romantically involved with a member of her team - Leo Faulcon. The other member of this team is a young lad called Kris Dojaan who has come to Kamelios to try to find his older brother, who has been taken by a Time Wind.
They are all in turn responsible to their commander - Gulio Ensavlion, a man obsessed by the possibilty that the Time Winds are controlled by intelligent creatures. In his mission to establish this, Ensavlion is totally single minded in this, and ruthlessly exploits Kris Dojaan's desire to find his brother, with ultimately tragic results.
Before the story plays out, Lena and Leo's relationship will be fully explored, Kris Dojaan will undertand the truth about his brother, and Leo Faulcon will unravel the mystery of the Time Winds but not before a tragic price is paid.

The book succeeds supremely well on all levels, it is a fantastically realised piece of science fiction. It is also a compelling human drama. To any sci-fi fan that has not read this book, I cannot recommend it enough. Eerily gorgeous.

I enjoyed this novel very much, the eerie world where winds blow away landscapes by altering time, strange aliens and monsters. Sadly the author recently pasted away this December. He is better known for his fantasy novels. But I thought this one was a good read for SF fans. The main character is reminiscent of main characters from P.K. Dick novels, a bit of a shifter and somewhat crumbled by his fears. Although, the alien world where this story takes place is stellar!!!

The Time Phantom was an ancient, shriveled figure; it was difficult to make out detail in the fading light, but he seemed to be staring straight at Faulcon as the viewscope peered down upon him, staring from shrunken eyes hidden in massive wrinkles of flesh and twisted facial muscle. His nose was squat, giving every appearance of having been crushed; it seemed to twitch as if he smelled Faulcon's scrutiny, but this was almost certainly imagination. His hair was lank, long, grey as ash -- and from this distance seemed filthy; it blew in the breeze. By way of breathing apparatus, he seemed to wear a corrupted respirator that covered the lower face, held in place only by the pressure of his lips . . . .

Kris Dojaan is sure that the Time Phantom is Mark, his brother, lost on Kamelios a year before. Though Mark was not precisely lost -- stolen, on Kamelios, is a better word to describe the disappearance of the rifters, those workers who come the valleys for artifacts of past and future civilizations.
For Kamelios, with its atmosphere made breathable for unmodified humans only through the use of sealed, movable cities and respirators, poses another threat to its colonists: the time winds, which scramble chronology in both its geological and historical aspects. Those who explore the ruins risk being swept off in the winds -- vanishing forever. Yet Kris feels that if he can enter one freely, he will survive -- riding the winds like the Phantom -- to find his time-lost brother.

But jaded by years of experiences and by the effects of the fiersigs -- fields of energy which sweep randomly over the planet causing abrupt emotional changes -- the other rifters feel differently. Veterans Leo Faulcon and his lover, Lena Tanoway, are given charge of Kris, to protect him from his wild scheme, on orders from Commander Gulio Ensavlion, whose hope for solving Kamelios' riddles lies in communicating with the time-traveling aliens which he alone has glimpsed.

Caught in his anticipation of a reunion with Mark, Kris begins to venture into the rift-valleys without the protection of his r-suit, which is equipped with a warning siren and enables the wearer to out-run the wind. One morning, Lena and Leo find him wandering in the valley, filled with important news. He has seen the Time Phantom close up, and though the figure is not Mark, the Phantom has told him he can take him to his brother.

And then the worst time wind in Kamelios' history begins to blow, taking Lena and Kris with it, leaving Leo behind to find them . . . somehow.

If you like odd, strange stories that are on the edge of reality, then you may like this novel.