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Coyote Rising

Coyote Rising

List Price: $23.95
Your Price: $16.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Exciting science fiction thriller
Review: For the most part, Earth is uninhabitable and there is no room for the domed cities on the moon and Mars so if mankind is to survive, it needs a new place to call home. In 47 Ursae Majoris, the planet Coyote with a climate similar to Earth was found; the starship Alabama with one hundred people made the voyage but half of those aboard were dissidents who wanted to escape the repressive regime on earth. They founded the settlement of Liberty but when more spaceships were sent from Earth carrying soldiers and colonists, the people of Liberty moved onto an unexplored part of the planet.

The colonial governor, Matriarch Luisa Hernandez rules all but the rebels with an iron grip. New colonists are forced to live in shuttle town, working for menial wages in Liberty while the base has plenty of food and water. Many of the new colonists escape and join the rebels until the Matriarch decreed nobody could leave the areas she controls. The rebel leaders Robert E. Lee and Carlos Montero (aka Rigel Kent) are the rallying points of the revolution that will see Liberty or death.

COYOTE RISING is the Revolutionary War of the future. Men and women are willing to die so that others may live free and Allen Steele does a fantastic job of making the audience see the similarities between two rebellions many centuries and light-years apart. As time passes on Coyote, a new government grows but doesn't take into account the wishes of it's citizens, which is why force is needed to try to remove the ruling party. Allen Steele is the successor to Robert Heinlein.

Harriet Klausner


Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Chock full of fascinating characters and vivid descriptions
Review: Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele follows up his imaginative novel COYOTE with the sequel, COYOTE RISING. I've read all of Allen Steele's novels and most of his short stories. Why? Because he never disappoints. Steele's stories always have the ring of truth because he populates them with believable characters, fast-paced plots, and technology that is understandable to the average Joe. All of these traits are in abundance in COYOTE RISING.

In the first novel, a group of interstellar colonists hijack a prototype starship named Alabama and flee a right-wing dictatorship to settle on the distant planet Coyote. Coyote is a harsh world with long and bitter winters and dangerous wildlife. The struggle to set up the first human colony on this planet is fraught with peril and makes for a great read. Steele recaps events from COYOTE nicely in COYOTE RISING, but I recommend reading the original first. It's like watching The Empire Strikes Back --- you don't need to see Star Wars to get it, but you will enjoy it more if you do.

In COYOTE, the first settlers fled tyranny on Earth and fought hard to explore the new world and build the settlement of Liberty. But the rulers of Earth have not given up on Coyote. They cannot. A majority of Earth has become uninhabitable, so mankind needs a new home. At the end of COYOTE, more spaceships are sent to Coyote with colonists and soldiers. The original settlers don't take too kindly to these interlopers led by tyrannical colonial governor Matriarch Luisa Hernandez, so they abandon Liberty and set up a new colony.

COYOTE RISING picks up from there, with the newcomers living in the now overcrowded Shuttlefield that has cropped up next to Liberty. Steele's strength is writing about things you actually believe can happen. The colonists are limited in what they can bring to the new world, so they must use the planet's natural resources. Most of the colonists live a brutal frontier life that many modern-day people would find unbearable.

The climate and wildlife on the planet Coyote are bad enough, but the new colonists also must deal with the oppressive Matriarch Hernandez who rules with an iron fist. Many newcomers abandon their miserable situation and join the rebels --- aka, the original colonists Steele introduced to us in COYOTE. Hernandez eventually pushes the rebels too far. Led by Alabama's Captain Robert E. Lee and Coyote's first explorer, Carlos Montero, the rebels lead a revolution to free Coyote from the new oppressive government. Steele is a talented action scene writer. They unfold at logical points and help move the plot. They aren't there only for the sake of action. He puts you into the minds of the characters and the heat of battle with just enough of the right details.

The novel is chock full of fascinating characters and vivid descriptions of this alien world. However, I did have one small problem. Both novels began as short stories serialized in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. Throughout both novels, it feels like you're reading a series of short stories with a common backdrop. Readers are reintroduced to characters they have met before and some of the previous action is recapped several times --- making redundancy and repetition an issue. However, this is a minor flaw and I still thoroughly enjoyed COYOTE RISING. In fact, on some level it was interesting to see the same event explained from different characters' viewpoints.

I read most of COYOTE RISING in a small Laundromat not far from my apartment in Los Angeles. The novel whisked me away from the dreary setting and transported me to the world of Coyote. I was so completely lost in the story of old characters like Carlos Montero and new characters like prophet Zoltan Shirow that I didn't hear the buzzer when my laundry was done. So if you're looking for a good read that will let you escape this world for a new one, then pick up COYOTE RISING.

--- Reviewed by Sean Doorly

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Inconsistent
Review: Like the first book from the Coyote series, this 2nd offering has many great points to offer - good character development, exciting action, fast-pace, good overall storylines.

However, the great points are offset by a number of annoying issues - 1) The author (and editors) don't seem to know their left from their right, consistently mixing up East and West (they seem to be able to get North and South right, however). 2) Semantic blunders - like calling Liberty Midland, and other paragraphs with fouled-up grammer. 3) Referring to rifle magazines as cartridges (a cartridge is the actual loaded shell casing, a magazine is loaded with cartridges). 4) Absurd geography... while Midland is pretty well laid out (I bet he had help with laying out Midland, because it is done so much better than the other island continents), Hammerhead has an even worse river layout than New Florida - there is a sheer cliff overlooking the West side of the island, with a WATERFALL! But where does the water come from? Does the author want us to believe that water runs uphill (as the river is shown on the map) from the other side of this ridge, on this small island? And why do we still have rivers impossibly bisecting and trisecting most of the islands? Look - I LOVE the maps, but sheesh, can we get the topography down just a little better next time? Screw the original map's topography... chuck it out and redo the topography - someone with a good sense of topography could easily come up with some new island layouts that could even be able to fit within the context of the original two books - say by using tides induced by Bear to explain some of the rivers flowing uphill and bisecting New Florida - but Hammerhead needs to be "rethunk" and redrawn a bit, and all the other islands with bisecting/trisecting rivers (sometimes ocurring multiple times on a single island) have got to be redone to correct this impossible layout.

The book ends up with an obvious opening to continued future stories for the characters - I just hope that a decent editor can be found, to correct the obvious and annoying errors that this author is prone to toss in among his otherwise great stories.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Clumsy writing and editing; Is ignorance its own reward?
Review: The man's writing is dull and awkward. His characters are pretty much the same. Either the author or his editor is bone ignorant. Characters paddle all over their new world, but they do it with oars! A little research, please. Our hero sets out a "trot line" to catch fish, but it becomes a "trout line." Gotta love spell-checkers. The science is problematic at best. The entire experience of this novel was roughly equivalent to reading junior high school English papers.


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