Welcome to dystopian future. Actually unlike countless other dystopian futures that became all rage in the modern literature this one at least does not look <i>hopeless</i>. Back to the story. Natural(?) cataclysms rendered our good old Earth unsuited for humans, so they moved to air cities leaving nature do its thing on the surface below.
Up in one of the such cities Helen was a woman approaching her middle age. She thought she was doing great when her life came crashing down; she lost practically everything it was possible to lose. Coming back to her mother (it seems to me modern people only recall the fact that they have parents only in a big crisis; come to think of this, the Parable of Prodigal Son appears in the Bible, so it is was like this even a coupe of thousand years ago) she had an accident which resulted in her dropping down to the planet. Luckily she survived, but got some serious injuries.
It turns out people still live on the surface; people about whom the sky inhabitants had no clue despite still visiting surface from time to time to take care of automatic mining equipment. A local shaman Arn (read: healer) was meditating nearby, so he was able to rescue Helen. Upon recovery she realized living in a forest was not too bad with life being practically idyllic until one day she learned that something is rotten in the state of Denmark - to borrow a quote from a classic. Something about which even Arn did not have any clue even though he was supposed to know everything being a shaman and all.
Despite the initial developments the book is a good old-fashioned adventure with people traveling places while narrowly avoiding mortal dangers, fighting overwhelming odds, bad people being bad and good people being good. Plus it has some slight supernatural elements.
The only difference between this book and old adventures was the fact that Helene - a woman - was not useless. Even being a typical city slicker who never in her life saw any forests outside pictures, she tried doing her best and often succeeded, like learning how to cook, or using spear to at least keep a hungry predator at bay long enough for help to arrive. She learns and her reactions and outlooks change.
The growth of the second main character - Arn - was not as big, but eventually he underwent some changes as well. There were other interesting enough actors of the drama, but they did not get enough screen time.
So the characters were good, the adventure was good and fast-moving (once it started). What did not work was writing. English is not author's native language and it is painfully obvious. From time to time I encountered an awkward phrase, or unusual sentence structure. English editor is still needed.
So if you do mind finding such let us say - irregularities, consider my rating to be 2 stars and avoid the book. Otherwise it is a fun adventure worth of 4 stars, but in the low range of it.
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- Khira AllenReviewed in Australia on July 23, 2022
Interesting story of progress versus existence with nature
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
