Helliconia Summer

As equal amazing as the first part, the second part plays mostly in a different region on Helliconia and also circles back to the place of the first book. Again we get amazing story telling and wonder writing. Absolute perfect.

reviews.metaphorosis.com
2.5 stars

On a planet with a complex orbit and centuries-long seasons, humans dominate the warmer times, only in some places living quietly with phagors and other sentient species. Their lives are observed remotely by Earth, via the Avernus, an orbital observation station. On the station, whose occupants have their own fascination with Helliconia's royal scandals, one resident has just won a lottery, offering him a ticket to the surface, and to certain death.

After the sweeping, Michenerian scope of the Spring volume, Aldiss tries hard to bring the story to a human scale in Helliconia Summer. He frames the story with an abandoned queen, pining for her cruel husband, and he comes back to her occasionally and toward the midpoint of the volume. But it's an artifice that is only partially successful. There's not enough foundation for the queen's situation to support the groaning, top-heavy mass of social and historical commentary that burdens the first half of the book.

More successful is the introduction of an outside observer. Billy Xiao-Pin, from the Avernus orbital station. His presence seemingly forces Aldiss to stick more close to a limited range of time and space, making the story both easier and more interesting to follow. Even when Billy is out of the picture, the story stays close to its other lead characters, and in particular King JangolAnganol, a tragic figure all of whose options are bad.

The result is a slow, but still much more intimate and entertaining book than its prequel. While first half is slow, the second begins to fulfill the promise that Aldiss must have hoped for with his reams of setup and background in the Spring volume. By the end, one feels somewhat satisfied - much the feeling of finally reaching “Of Beren and Luthien” after plowing through the duller bits of Tolkien's Quenta Silmarillion.

Executive Summary: There were times where I enjoyed this book, but they were few and far between. Just not enough for me to like overall.

Full Review
If you look at how long it took me to read this fairly short book (26 days) and how many multiple day gaps I often went between reading it, it should be no real surprise I gave this 2 stars.

I found the prologue long and pretty boring, and it might be the most character development of the entire book. Unfortunately after the prologue that character no longer appears.

I found most of the characters pretty unlikeable. That always makes it harder for me to enjoy a book. I did find the development of the town pretty interesting, especially the technological innovations that came along.

The world building was interesting, but a bit too hard sci-fi for my liking. My eyes kind of glazed over when he'd get into scientific observations about Helliconia.

Overall, this book just wasn't for me, and despite buying the entire trilogy, I won't be continuing on to see what happens next.

This is a very interesting and thought provoking book. However I felt that it would have been better packaged as two, perhaps even three short novels. Avoiding spoilers, the three sections (as I see them), are as follows:

Part 1 (**): “The Prelude” that actually takes up about a third of the book. This follows a young hunter as events lead him through a frozen world and is a fascinating look at how a human culture could survive in such conditions.
Part 2 (***): A look at how a small community adapts to warming weather and changing conditions. Quite interesting.
Part 3 (**): This reads like a pretty standard fantasy story involving a minotaur attack but with rather wooden characters.

The key strength of the book is the way it treats the landscape as a character. This is at it's fullest in the first section. Mr Aldiss creates a detailed, beautiful and deadly environment that I fell for hook, line and sinker.

Unfortunately the greatest weakness of the book is the weakness of it's characters. As the weather warms Mr Aldiss brings his characters increasingly to the fore and their two dimensional nature becomes more significant. While at the start the cinema screen of the mind is treated to a vast vista with our little character struggling through it, by Part 3 we have an extreme close-up of our hero, and the mahogany expression is all too apparent.

Repeatedly a situation would become really interesting and I would think, now things are going to get exciting! Only to have the dispassionate narrator state something along the lines of:"..of course [character A]'s plans came to nothing. 1500 miles to the east a short man stubbed his toe. This seemed of no importance to anyone but him. 600 years later nations would fall. To the north a bird laid an egg. Meanwhile back in the town [character A] had been married for 6 months and her mother had died... This got frustrating.

When this book is good, it is very very good. When it is weak (I'm sorry to say) it was rather boring.

An SF classic with wonderful world building.