While discussing this book, I not only have to add a spoiler warning for this book, but of course also one for the one before; “the Forge of God”. This story serves as a continuation to that one, even though, and that was the first thing I really liked about it, it is something completely different. Had the first book been about an alien invasion or, rather, an alien sneak attack on Earth, in this book, Martin, the son of Arthur Gordon from the first book, and about eighty “Children” are sent out on a spaceship of the benefactors to destroy the plant of the planet killers. We get thus the same character but a completely different story, and I was reminded positively at “Ender’s Game” and its sequel, “Speaker of the Dead”, in that there also, even though we did get Andrew Wiggin in both, they are completely different stories. At least until Orson Scott Card sold out and told the whole story directly after “Ender’s Game” to the nth century in I don’t know how many more books.
Here, we also get a closer look at the planet killers from “the Forge of God” and why they had attacked Earth, even though we never saw them harvesting resources. It seems the planet killers eliminate possible future threats so long as those have not become too strong yet that they could take out the builders of the killers themselves. During reading “the Forge of God”, I could never shake off the feeling that the builders of the planets killer and the benefactors who had rescued some humans and set them up on the mission of the Law must have something in common. They might not have been the same von Neumann probes, but they seem to share a fate, as if the creators of the killer had later realized their mistakes and therefore sent the benefactors. Maybe, this feeling came from watching a Babylon 5 review where it was postulated that Vorlons and Shadows might be two side of the same coin. This in the end turns out to be true to a certain degree, and I had the same feeling here while reading this book. Even though we do get more details of both probes here, even a description, with killers being needle-shape and benefactors being spider-shaped, I could still not lose the feeling reading this book, either. This feeling was also accentuated when Martin had dreams and I wondered whether it, like in Ender’s Game, meant something. Again, like the builders of the killers trying to get absolution for their mistakes.
And the similarities with “Ender’s Game” didn’t stop there. We also have here a revenge mission to the home planet of the species who had attacked Earth and I wondered if the species here as well would have realized their mistake and were thus waiting for Earth’s revenge mission accepting their fate. But had they also had relativistic speeds in “Ender’s Game”, it didn’t matter for Ender and his crew as they remained back close to Earth first in a space station and then on an asteroid in the asteroid belt if I remember correctly, and communicated with their ships via ansible, which could happen instantaneously. Therefore, having the children on board of the Dawn Treader reminded me more of “Forever War”, where time dilution also plays an important role; missions as seen from Earth’s reference point take like forever and everybody the soldiers know dies quickly as it takes them such a long time to get to anywhere, and time passes much faster for them. This also happens here, even though the “Children” do not really plan to go home afterwards, thus not mattering how much time would pass outside.
The first third was thus the search of, finding and attacking the system of the planet-killers. And had this part been good enough, it then switched gear and got even better. The second third was, I don’t know how to describe and, and the third part was then just ingenious. I can thus not highly enough recommend this book. As I have already mentioned, some ideas sounded derivative, but then again, their usage was absolutely well done here and really got me thinking. Moreover, I cannot help but give any science-fiction book with time-dilation effect at relativistic speeds five stars, it is just done so rarely.
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Reviews with images
An Interesting Followup to Forge of God
I LOVE Greg Bear. To say he was a literary giant would be an understatement. Forge of God was one of the best novel's I've ever read, so I couldn't resist reading the followup. As you likely know...This book is completely different. It has some references to the previous entry, with a returning character, but it's not remotely similar to FOG. This is way more of a Space Opera, fantasy leaning, epic. It's well written, and tells a pretty cool story, but it didn't quite hit as hard for me. Truly, I'd give it a 3.5, but I'm willing to round up for Mr. Bear. I wish he had lived to write a 3rd entry. His work will live on forever, and I appreciate everything he gave!
Top reviews from other countries
fastreader
Earth destroyed and the children of Earth seek vengeance. Great story telling
Reviewed in Canada on January 11, 2013
Christopher Carrion
Greg Bear Anvil of Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 19, 2010
