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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
Mixed reaction - it was ok, I am looking forward to book 3 - but it seemed to focus too much on the tsunami
This story continues from where Red Thunder left off and its in the same vein as the original. I really liked the author's note at the end trying to explain the circumstances. I think that change really makes the story stand out. onto the third one.
@2 in the series. I read the 1st one pre-Good Reads. Good story. Good space opera. Coming of age story. Interesting technology in the very near future. Interesting evolution of the current world, climate & the body politic. Remember, by law, you're not an american unless you own 10 guns...
Entertaining fast pace somewhat YA classic Sci-fi adventure:
Varley can definitely write a story and most of the book is pretty interesting in a [b:The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress|16690|The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress|Robert A. Heinlein|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348768309l/16690._SY75_.jpg|1048525] kind of way, there are just a few issues that bothers me:
1. It's actually 2 stories, the first which Varley started out with, is a classic catastrophe what-if novel, depicting an object from space hitting the sea-bed and causing a massive tsunami. The second story is the 2. novel in the Red Thunder series, which tries, not totally successfully, to encompass the tsunami story.
2. The mixture of the 2 stories causes some logic flaws like, why would a team of people who single-handedly built a spaceship and flew to mars, travel though a disaster area in the US in an old diesel powered truck.
3. The lone-hero gun-in-hand second-amendment attitude becomes a little tiring at times.
I'm probably going to read the 3. novel as well
Varley can definitely write a story and most of the book is pretty interesting in a [b:The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress|16690|The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress|Robert A. Heinlein|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348768309l/16690._SY75_.jpg|1048525] kind of way, there are just a few issues that bothers me:
1. It's actually 2 stories, the first which Varley started out with, is a classic catastrophe what-if novel, depicting an object from space hitting the sea-bed and causing a massive tsunami. The second story is the 2. novel in the Red Thunder series, which tries, not totally successfully, to encompass the tsunami story.
2. The mixture of the 2 stories causes some logic flaws like, why would a team of people who single-handedly built a spaceship and flew to mars, travel though a disaster area in the US in an old diesel powered truck.
3. The lone-hero gun-in-hand second-amendment attitude becomes a little tiring at times.
I'm probably going to read the 3. novel as well
Second in the Red Thunder Young Adult science-fiction series set in a futuristic Earth, er, Mars.
As a result of Red Thunder (book one), man has colonized Mars and enjoys almost free, everlasting power thanks to Jubal Broussard. A man kept prisoner in the Falkland Islands as a "security measure" for his protection.
My Take
Another excellent read by Varley. Ray gets a lot more action and adventure that he could imagine. Struggling through the debris and bodies left behind by the tsunami to find Grandma. Surviving multiple invasions of Mars. Evading corporate mercenaries intent on finding Jubal before the others. Figuring a way out from under a mess of universal proportions. Let alone the fascinating ideas Varley promotes for free energy and the black hole concept of refrigeration! Damn, I want one of them!
This story has two parts both of which revolve around Jubal. In the first half, some thing from space suddenly strikes and skids along the Earth starting up a tsunami of disastrous proportions taking out the East Coast and the Caribbean. Even worse, it wipes out Florida where Grandma Garcia is still tending the Blast Off motel. Terrified, the Strickland-Garcia family heads back to Earth determined to find Grandma and Aunt Maria with Travis' help.
The second half is a corporate invasion of Mars looking for Jubal and the mercenaries have no qualms about using torture to find out what they want from the Strickland-Garcias and anyone else they believe may have had interaction with Jubal.
Ray, Manny and Kelly's son (the main characters of Red Thunder), is the central hero for this installment. Seventeen, Ray is interested in all the usual teen pursuits: riding his board—between Phobos and Mars, his stereo, and girls. Being a Strickland-Garcia, Ray also wants some adventure. Something he's about to get in spades.
The Cover and Title
The cover is very sleek with its casino rocket ship hovering between Earth and Mars after all, tourism is the name of the game on Mars.
I'm not sure where the title comes from though. Okay, the Red is the series name and Mars is obviously red but Lightning???
As a result of Red Thunder (book one), man has colonized Mars and enjoys almost free, everlasting power thanks to Jubal Broussard. A man kept prisoner in the Falkland Islands as a "security measure" for his protection.
My Take
Another excellent read by Varley. Ray gets a lot more action and adventure that he could imagine. Struggling through the debris and bodies left behind by the tsunami to find Grandma. Surviving multiple invasions of Mars. Evading corporate mercenaries intent on finding Jubal before the others. Figuring a way out from under a mess of universal proportions. Let alone the fascinating ideas Varley promotes for free energy and the black hole concept of refrigeration! Damn, I want one of them!
This story has two parts both of which revolve around Jubal. In the first half, some thing from space suddenly strikes and skids along the Earth starting up a tsunami of disastrous proportions taking out the East Coast and the Caribbean. Even worse, it wipes out Florida where Grandma Garcia is still tending the Blast Off motel. Terrified, the Strickland-Garcia family heads back to Earth determined to find Grandma and Aunt Maria with Travis' help.
The second half is a corporate invasion of Mars looking for Jubal and the mercenaries have no qualms about using torture to find out what they want from the Strickland-Garcias and anyone else they believe may have had interaction with Jubal.
Ray, Manny and Kelly's son (the main characters of Red Thunder), is the central hero for this installment. Seventeen, Ray is interested in all the usual teen pursuits: riding his board—between Phobos and Mars, his stereo, and girls. Being a Strickland-Garcia, Ray also wants some adventure. Something he's about to get in spades.
The Cover and Title
The cover is very sleek with its casino rocket ship hovering between Earth and Mars after all, tourism is the name of the game on Mars.
I'm not sure where the title comes from though. Okay, the Red is the series name and Mars is obviously red but Lightning???
adventurous
slow-paced
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Red Lightning is a direct sequel to Red Thunder, set years after the first book, and I think it's a better novel. There are a lot of similarities, of course, including a teenage narrator who is pretty ridiculously mature for his supposed age. Assuming you can live with that, the two major parts of this adventure - a search and rescue mission on Earth, and a friends-against-the-world journey to fight the powers-that-be - both struck me as more engaging than the trip-to-Mars of the first book. In any event, if you like this kind of space opera set in the near future, this one won't disappoint.
Perfectly fine, solid, sci fi grafted to coming of age book. But: lost it for a week with 30 pp to go and I forgot all about it. Fun, forgettable. Once the disasters are over, a lot less interesting.
Having reviewed the first of this series (Red Thunder) and being pretty impressed, I quickly moved on to the second of John’s books in this series.
As I had hoped, this is an interesting novel with many of the pleasing attributes of the first. It is, in simple terms, Red Thunder: the Next Generation. The tale here moves on from Manny, Kelly, Dak and Travis to the teenage prodigy of Manny and Kelly. Now living on Mars and helping run Manny and Kelly’s Red Thunder Hotel, the tale is told in the first person by their son, Ramon (Ray) Garcia-Strickland.
Things have moved on since the first novel. The Squeezer has now made travel across the solar system relatively easy and comparatively quick. People have spread from Earth to create a community on Mars and turn Phobos into a sports centre (for air-boarding between itself and Mars, no less.)
The expansion across the system suddenly halts when something lands in the Pacific Ocean, travelling at near-light speed. The resulting tsunami obliterates the east coast of the USA. Ray and his parents travel to Earth to rescue Betty, his grandma, still living at the Blast-Off Motel in Florida. At the same time Jubal, the only person who really knows how to create and operate the Squeezer, disappears from his luxury prison on the Falkland Islands.
The majority of the book deals with the journey to save Grandma (driven by Travis Broussard in a DUKW) and the rediscovery of Jubal, as well as to find the origin of the tsunami. There’s also the revolution and independence of the Martians who are suddenly placed under martial law by Earth power factions and tortured (with clear similarities to Guantanamo Bay.)
However, it all (in Heinlein-esque style) ends pretty much happily ever after.
As with the first novel, John writes entertainingly. Ray’s commentary is gawky, embarrassingly humorous and seriously down-played. As Ray puts it, in that wonderful reductive way writers can have (page335), ‘And that’s how I saved Mars and maybe the whole human race, and in the process kicked some of the most powerful people on Earth in the butt.’
As a reader, it felt good to revisit and continue on from Red Thunder. More pleasingly (for me) Jubal is less important than previously, though he is still an important character. This means that we get less of his irritating Cajun accent, which really didn’t work for me in the previous novel, as I spent more time trying to decipher his speech in writing than enjoying the plot.
More negatively, what didn’t work for me this time was a little more serious. John writes in an interesting Afterword that this book was inspired (if that is the right word) after both the events of 9/11 in 2001 and the devastation caused by the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, though much of it had been spookily written by the time of that disaster. Poignantly, Hurricane Katrina, in September 2005, happened as this book was being finished and, like the tale told In Red Lightning, emphasised how quickly civil order could break down in sudden disasters. However, with its inspiration obvious and with its heart firmly on its sleeve, Red Lightning became for me an imperfect novel.
In particular, the journey on Earth, from the Garcia-Strickland’s arrival to their rescue mission in Florida, is just too long. Whilst I can see the need to tell the tales of devastation and horror following a major tidal-wave, travelling there by the use of a DUKW amphibious vehicle just makes no sense. A journey that, based on previous journeys by the Red Lightning would take hours, or possibly a day, takes much longer. If the need to see whether relatives had survived was so urgent then I’m sure the family could’ve pulled a few strings and gained a spaceship to get there quicker, despite all the bureaucracy and zoning-off that has occurred. (That was basically what they did by building Red Thunder in the first novel.)
If it was a case of helping without having to deal with bureaucracy it could’ve been done by flying in, picking up, dropping off supplies and getting out in a matter of hours. Whilst it is important to tell the tale of a government struggling to come to terms with a major disaster, this could’ve been done without having to drive through it. And they could’ve taken rescue supplies to boot. Whilst the story of devastated America was shocking, it was marred for me by being, in this instance, illogical.
Overall this is still a tale told with panache. Better in some ways than Red Thunder, but less so in other aspects, it is still a great page-turner if you can cope with the odd logical lapse.
As I had hoped, this is an interesting novel with many of the pleasing attributes of the first. It is, in simple terms, Red Thunder: the Next Generation. The tale here moves on from Manny, Kelly, Dak and Travis to the teenage prodigy of Manny and Kelly. Now living on Mars and helping run Manny and Kelly’s Red Thunder Hotel, the tale is told in the first person by their son, Ramon (Ray) Garcia-Strickland.
Things have moved on since the first novel. The Squeezer has now made travel across the solar system relatively easy and comparatively quick. People have spread from Earth to create a community on Mars and turn Phobos into a sports centre (for air-boarding between itself and Mars, no less.)
The expansion across the system suddenly halts when something lands in the Pacific Ocean, travelling at near-light speed. The resulting tsunami obliterates the east coast of the USA. Ray and his parents travel to Earth to rescue Betty, his grandma, still living at the Blast-Off Motel in Florida. At the same time Jubal, the only person who really knows how to create and operate the Squeezer, disappears from his luxury prison on the Falkland Islands.
The majority of the book deals with the journey to save Grandma (driven by Travis Broussard in a DUKW) and the rediscovery of Jubal, as well as to find the origin of the tsunami. There’s also the revolution and independence of the Martians who are suddenly placed under martial law by Earth power factions and tortured (with clear similarities to Guantanamo Bay.)
However, it all (in Heinlein-esque style) ends pretty much happily ever after.
As with the first novel, John writes entertainingly. Ray’s commentary is gawky, embarrassingly humorous and seriously down-played. As Ray puts it, in that wonderful reductive way writers can have (page335), ‘And that’s how I saved Mars and maybe the whole human race, and in the process kicked some of the most powerful people on Earth in the butt.’
As a reader, it felt good to revisit and continue on from Red Thunder. More pleasingly (for me) Jubal is less important than previously, though he is still an important character. This means that we get less of his irritating Cajun accent, which really didn’t work for me in the previous novel, as I spent more time trying to decipher his speech in writing than enjoying the plot.
More negatively, what didn’t work for me this time was a little more serious. John writes in an interesting Afterword that this book was inspired (if that is the right word) after both the events of 9/11 in 2001 and the devastation caused by the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, though much of it had been spookily written by the time of that disaster. Poignantly, Hurricane Katrina, in September 2005, happened as this book was being finished and, like the tale told In Red Lightning, emphasised how quickly civil order could break down in sudden disasters. However, with its inspiration obvious and with its heart firmly on its sleeve, Red Lightning became for me an imperfect novel.
In particular, the journey on Earth, from the Garcia-Strickland’s arrival to their rescue mission in Florida, is just too long. Whilst I can see the need to tell the tales of devastation and horror following a major tidal-wave, travelling there by the use of a DUKW amphibious vehicle just makes no sense. A journey that, based on previous journeys by the Red Lightning would take hours, or possibly a day, takes much longer. If the need to see whether relatives had survived was so urgent then I’m sure the family could’ve pulled a few strings and gained a spaceship to get there quicker, despite all the bureaucracy and zoning-off that has occurred. (That was basically what they did by building Red Thunder in the first novel.)
If it was a case of helping without having to deal with bureaucracy it could’ve been done by flying in, picking up, dropping off supplies and getting out in a matter of hours. Whilst it is important to tell the tale of a government struggling to come to terms with a major disaster, this could’ve been done without having to drive through it. And they could’ve taken rescue supplies to boot. Whilst the story of devastated America was shocking, it was marred for me by being, in this instance, illogical.
Overall this is still a tale told with panache. Better in some ways than Red Thunder, but less so in other aspects, it is still a great page-turner if you can cope with the odd logical lapse.