Voyage to Eneh

The Seas of Kilmoyn: 1

ISBN: 0-812-53448-4 Order from: Amazon.com

Apparently the start of a new multi-volume epic, this naval adventure on alien seas is competent, but lacks cohesion and intensity due to multiple viewpoints and abundance of sub-plots.

Reviewed by David on May 28, 2001

Genre: Science Fiction (War, Aliens, Intrigue, Naval Adventure)

Synopsis: The human interstellar ship Ramparts has crashed on Kilmoyn. The planet has its own humanoid inhabitants, who have struggled with natural disasters to reach approximately nineteenth-century technology.

The small human colony's survival is precarious, and with a population pool too small to sustain repairing the crashed spaceship, the humans decide to cooperate with the locals—to an extent. Trying to avoid cultural contamination, the humans pretend to be a race from the dry, nearly unlivable deserts.

However, the Kilmoyns, a race depending much on the sea and maritime transport, are riven by political intrigue, competition, and occasionally wars. The humans, with their own intrigues, are thrust right into the middle of the turbulent civilization.

Full Review: In this familiar mileau of diminished but knowledgeble human colonists amid a powerful but more primitive alien civilization, Green paints with a wide brush, showing multiple characters amidst intensifying intrigue and looming war. The local England-analogue, the Kertovan Republic, seems the most progressive of the states—and highly dependent on its ships, economically and culturally. The sailors, called Farers, are its warrior class as well as main economic and political force, and a few "drylanders" have started to penetrate this elite, with courage, skill and flexibilty.

While doing an excellent job of painting a complex, turbulent, quickly progressing civilization, the author is not fully successful in gathering emotional involvement. The very scope of the work, with plenty of view-hopping, and the multitude of plots and subplots cannot sustain much focus. Some of the intrigues seem inexplicably malevolent—as though murky conspiracies try to do as much harm as possible—with a lack of goals or efficiency. In addition, a lot of common terms are replaced with familiar-sounding analogues. While this contributes to a somewhat exotic feel, the distraction is not worth it.

While skillful and full of sympathetic, intelligent characters, this book suffers from an excess of view-hopping, subplots and the attending lack of emotional involvement. The lack of a specific adversary or conflict in this first of what appears to be a multi-volume series also dimishes the sense of excitement and satisfaction in reading this book.

Overall: 5.5; Plot: 4.5; Characters: 5.5; Style: 4.5; World-building: 6; Originality: 5;

ISBN: 0-812-53448-4 Order from: Amazon.com