Spin: A review that is less spoilery than the book jacket

My grade: A-
Bottom Line: Recommended reading!



Some of you may have noticed "On Fermicat's Nightstand" in my sidebar. I always appreciate good book recommendations and have discovered many of my favorite authors based on tips from friends (and lately from some of those "you might also like..." tools on internet booksellers' websites). I'll be posting book reviews of the nightstand denizens once I finish them. You can get an idea of the kind of books I like by checking out the books section of my profile. Rather than list individual books (too many!), I have listed some of my favorite authors. Most of the time I read science fiction, but occasionally I will throw something else into the mix. I also read non-fiction, but since I don't read non-fiction in bed, it will never be found on the nightstand. Got it? Here is my take on Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. I stayed up until about 1:30am Saturday night to finish it. Yes, it was that good.

An excerpt from the book jacket:
"One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. [...] Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside--more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future. [...]

Life on earth is about to get much, much stranger"

This book really sucked me in and kept me engaged until I finished it. The story is narrated by Tyler Dupree, but it is focused on the effect of the Spin membrane on earth and humankind. The story follows the lives of his friends, siblings Jason and Diane, who react to the Spin in very different ways. The author sustains the suspense about the future of the characters, as well as what would happen to the earth and everyone on it. Wilson does a good job of folding in bits of detail throughout that tie the storylines together, but not so much detail that the book becomes boring. He writes the story in two interwoven timelines, past and near-present, which merge at the end of the novel. This device helps keep the ending from getting bogged down and allows a fast paced resolution.

OK, having the stars go out isn't entirely original, but having a strange temporal and physical barrier placed around the earth by "the hypotheticals" sure is. And some of the attempted solutions and their consequences were interesting ideas and outcomes. I found the book fresh and engrossing, and stayed up way too late on several evenings because I couldn't put it down. It is the best novel I've read since Dan Simmons' Ilium, which was superb. A close runner up would be The Atrocity Archives (Charles Stross). I read that one last month and it was good, wacky fun with elements of science fiction, horror and the supernatural mixed in with the comedy. A detective story, sort of like Kiln People (David Brin), only weirder - with less science and more magic.

So that's four book recommendations for the price of one. You're welcome. Enjoy.