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A review by geekwayne
Helliconia Spring by Brian W. Aldiss
3.0
'Helliconia Spring' by Brian W. Aldiss was a recent pick by my book club, chosen after the author recently died.
The book is about a planet that orbits binary stars. It has a very long orbital year, which has strange effects on the inhabitants of the planet. At the start of this book, the planet is coming out of a winter cycle and moving slowly into spring. There are dominant life forms that start to struggle. There are cyclical plagues that thin and change the humanoid populations. Civilizations rise, fall, and change.
I struggled to read this book until I changed my perceptions. While there are characters in the book, this is not a character driven story. It is an environment driven story. It was tough to get through while I tried to find characters to latch on to, but it got better when I started to view the larger picture. The appendixes in the version I read are definitely things I should have looked at earlier in my reading of this novel. I ultimately enjoyed reading it, but it felt like a struggle to read.
The book is about a planet that orbits binary stars. It has a very long orbital year, which has strange effects on the inhabitants of the planet. At the start of this book, the planet is coming out of a winter cycle and moving slowly into spring. There are dominant life forms that start to struggle. There are cyclical plagues that thin and change the humanoid populations. Civilizations rise, fall, and change.
I struggled to read this book until I changed my perceptions. While there are characters in the book, this is not a character driven story. It is an environment driven story. It was tough to get through while I tried to find characters to latch on to, but it got better when I started to view the larger picture. The appendixes in the version I read are definitely things I should have looked at earlier in my reading of this novel. I ultimately enjoyed reading it, but it felt like a struggle to read.