DESOLATION ROAD

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable esoteric entertainment, par with Heinlein
Review: Desolation Road is a scifi romp through what might be when we start migrating to distant planets. The combination of entertaining and well thought through characters, peculiar perspective manipulation, and engrossing dialogue makes this one of my personal favorites. Air, Land, and Sea all take secondary roles to time and space. A distinctly new style and approach while addressing the mundane and oft peculiar activities of current life in the post industrial age make this book breath with the life of all times. Heinlein without the mysogynistic attitudes

Rating:
Summary: A great and original science-fiction book.
Review: Ian Mac Donald has a refreshing style that should appeal to all hardcore sci-fi readers tired of big spaceships and huge disasters. Here, the core of the plot is the human destiny, with its share of luck and coincidence ; if everything seems at first a bit disentangled, it all ties up in the end in a glorious finish wich is one of the best ever written. This book is like foreign food : try, and you'll find it excellent.

Rating:
Summary: A great and original science-fiction book.
Review: Ian McDonald's Desolation Road is undeniably his best book, a rich and vibrant tale of village life on a terraformed Mars. Reminiscent (intentionally) of the magic realist novels of Marquez and Llosa it transcends the science fiction genre without denigrating it, revelling in both worlds to the credit of each. This is one of those books that critics should hold up as an example of great writing in sf, especially because it won't disappoint even the most hardened veteran reader--literally, a book for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: McDonald's best work to date.
Review: Ian McDonald's Desolation Road is undeniably his best book, a rich and vibrant tale of village life on a terraformed Mars. Reminiscent (intentionally) of the magic realist novels of Marquez and Llosa it transcends the science fiction genre without denigrating it, revelling in both worlds to the credit of each. This is one of those books that critics should hold up as an example of great writing in sf, especially because it won't disappoint even the most hardened veteran reader--literally, a book for everyone.