Planetfall

[king_pellinor]

I am not one to wax lyrical about things, but I've just been given a copy of Emma Newman's Planetfall for Christmas, and having just read right through it in one sitting I feel moved to break the habit of a lifetime and actually say something about it rather than just going on to the next book.  Not to mention posting on LJ again after several years.

I read the book for one reason, and that is because I know the author. I read the book just now, rather than say a year ago, because I was afraid to do it earlier. I kind of felt I ought to; but I like Emma, and we're building a fantastic story for our characters in Empire LARP, and I was worried that if I didn't like it that would have some sort of vaguely negative impact on... something. After all, my normal sort of SF is old-fashioned light-hearted space opera - Asimov, Harrison, Heinlein, Adams, original Star Trek as seen through a Galaxy Quest filter - and from a quick Google I could tell this book was clearly not in that camp.

I don't want to spoiler anything, as part of the point of this post is to get people to read it, but I have to say that I found it absolutely *amazing*. I often find it hard to get into the heads of characters (which is possibly related to me liking light-hearted plot rather than deep characterisation) but I was completely, utterly immersed in Ren's perspective, as I've *never* experienced before.

This is to the extent of having to sit for a bit after finishing (when everyone else had gone to bed, luckily) to just try to swim back up to the surface. When I say amazing, I do mean I am in a maze - 12 hours later, the better part of my mind is still adrift on that sea.

The whole thing - characterisation, plot, world-building - just make perfect coherent sense, and the underlying theme (or what I take it to be) flows through inexorably such that although the ending seems a surprise on a couple of levels it is actually, on just a moment's reflection, completely and utterly right. It's beautiful.

It's given me a new appreciation for what can be done in book form. I need to go back and re-read other books that I've gone "meh" about despite other people raving, and see what I've missed.