I read this book months ago and meant to write a review, but I kept putting it off, because in the end I didn’t think the book was very good, but I’m such a John Varley fan I didn’t want to admit it.
Here’s some random thoughts I jotted down when I was planning an official review. (Most of which won’t make sense if you haven’t read his previous books The Golden Globe and Steel Beach.)
There were several sections in the book that fell into the trap that a lot of popular authors fall into: “this was one of my most popular stories ever so now I’ll write it from another person’s point of view.” That wasn’t the entire book this time, thank goodness, but it was a good chunk of it. I think some readers like that though, and certainly a lot of well-known authors have done it (Anne McCaffrey, Orson Scott Card, Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, David Eddings, even Stephen King has dabbled in it) so I can’t fault him for it, it’s just not something I personally enjoy.
I felt like the “Junior Heinlein” style (a kind of dated, retro feel, like pulp sci-fi from the 50s) that Varley started using in the early 2000s got stronger as the story went along. Or maybe I was just in denial at the beginning.
There was a lack of contractions all throughout the book. (Which, if you’d ever like to mimic a stilted, old-fashioned style, ditch the contractions. It works wonders. And by that I mean it sounds awful.)
The simplified writing style works well for Sherlock, but with everyone else it feels stiff and unnatural.
I have to ask, why the Ironton/Heinleintown confusion? We know Heinleintown very well from previous books, but this is a different district. Varley makes a lot of effort to explain that while Irontown and Heinlein town are different, they do get confused by the general public, and you may be in one when you think you’re in the other and…I have to ask: was it all just because he wanted to name the book Irontown and not Heinleintown? Because if that’s the only reason behind the muddled storytelling there, I really think he should’ve just gone with a different title.
Why the difference between the main character and Hildy’s version of events in the Big Glitch? What storytelling purpose did it serve, to say Hildy had it completely wrong? It wasn’t a matter of someone having a different opinion of the events, their timelines didn’t match at all. The facts were so different, I don’t think it could’ve been a misunderstanding, someone would have to actually lie about what happened. I didn’t think it made the story more interesting, it just made me conflicted in an unsatisfying way about the characters, and once again muddied the waters for no good reason that I could see.
Why drag Charon in there? It felt like Varley wasn’t satisfied with the Big Bad (the Central Computer) from Steel Beach, he had to drag in the Big Bad from Golden Globe to make things more interesting. I think it took away the culpability of the Central Computer and the humans who’d been the original bad guys of the Big Glitch.
It’s as if Varley didn’t like the idea of a generally nice A.I. having a meltdown, or of regular humans going along with it, he felt he had to bring in a one-dimensional race of people who’ve been bred to be vicious, unfeeling killers, and make them the ultimate bad guy. It was more interesting to have it be regular people who were manipulated, or a computer that went off the rails because of all the personalities it had to manifest to interact with every person on the moon.
Regarding the bits with the dog, I enjoyed the character, but I didn’t think it was always necessary to have the translator break in to Sherlock’s thoughts. Some of the translator notes were a little entertaining, but I think you could’ve done without that character completely. I think the reader should have been given some credit, we know dogs will think differently from humans. Having the translator break in was like someone explaining the joke to you when you already got it.
All in all I think a tighter edit would’ve helped. It’s not a long book by any means, but the flow could’ve been better if it was trimmed: sometimes details add depth to the story, but a lot of times in this book the unnecessary exposition or explanations bogged down the pacing.
I really wanted to like this one (and I do think it’s miles better than Red Thunder) but in the end I was a little disappointed.