Child Of The River [Mass Market Paperback]

Back then my main focus on reading was lots of fantasy with a good dose of science fiction to season.These books made up probably around ninety percent of reading. If I wasn't reading one I was reading the other. Then, I found it. Other books. Physics, history, classical, cookbooks, modern fiction, biographies, and oh so much more. A whole new world. I was still reading some science fiction, but after a few years it had slowly faded off of my general reading list. Now four years after the last (the last being the whole of the triumphant Foundation series, at least the ones penned by Asminov himself) I decided to go to the library and look for an eye-catching science fiction book that I have never seen before, or ever even heard of the author, just to keep the experiment as clean as possible. I wanted to see if science fiction still had a place in my heart, or if it was just going to be slowly reduced to pleasant, yet fuzzy memories.

Well, as you might have guessed, this is the book that caught my eye. Everything about it said Pick Me, Pick Me. A flashy cover with a nice bit of artwork inset. An author that I had never heard of with a nime that had a dignified ring to it. There is more than one book to read which is always a nice thing. It takes place in the far distant future which is always a bonus for my sci-fi reading.

Turns out that this is a nice addition to the genre.Some of the ideas seem to have the recycled stamp on them, but then most books nowadays do. Still, there are alot of fresh ideas (at least from my reading experience) that seem to be well thought out. Although I will say this. I had forgotten how gritty the details can be in science fiction. In most of these kind of books you can expect in various degrees some sort of unneeded junk. Not even Arthur C. Clark or Isaac Asminov are entirely exempt from this classification. I find it to be an interesting phenomenon, and would jump at the chance to read an essay explaining why this is so.

A galaxy that was totally controlled and shaped by its super intellegent inhabitants, also known as the preservers, who had genettically engineered thousands of intellegent races from various species of animals, built whole planets, designed and arranged solar systems as if they were rearranging their living room, and when they decided their work was completed, took the ultimate final step, and as an entire race, went into the black hole at the center of the galaxy. All adding up to a very thought provoking session once all the little details that I don't have the desire to list are thrown in.

Now the story itself has been done before in many various ways (in many different genres as well, though science fiction and fantasy seem to have the beast cornered so to speak), but the setting, storytelling, and some nice little twists all do a nice job of covering it up. We follow a boy (Yamamannama I think, but everyone thankfully calls him Yama for short,) on the edge of manhood who lives a fairly boring life, but thinks he is destined for a better, more adventurous life. (Sound familiar to anyone out there?) His father isn't really his father (where did that come from?), but we are aware of this very early as they are both from different races, (ok, now things are begining to cross that *not so typical* threshhold,) Yama being a human-like human, while his father being a praying mantis or something-like human. See how the story progresses?

Yama, after some strange adventures, ends up traveling with this monkish character who seems to have a darker edge than your average monk. After a terrifingly cool scene in which he finds he can control ancient machines with his mind he ditches the monk. (Wrong move, I can see this coming back to haunt him in the next book.) He eventually teams up with a young rat-boy, who wants nothing more than to be Yama's squire. He also hooks up with a very mouthy She-Cat, who is supposed to make the story a little more fun, but instead the character comes across as just plain annoying, (think Jar-Jar meets Rosessane Barr!), constantly critizing and using words that I had better never catch my cat saying. The three then team up and embark on some fantasy based adventures that blatently reminded me of my D&D days, when the book abruptly ends almost in the middle of a sentence. ( Well not quite, but it sure felt like is it.) This isn't McCauley's fault though. It was an editorial call.

McCauley is a very good writer. He easily weaves together the story blending science fiction, fantasy, nice plot lines, lots of little surprises, a very colorful world, and quest themes that have *hero* stamped all over them.

To answer my earlier question of science fiction in general, I have found it to still be fun, capturing my imagination almost as if I had never left. Lesson learned. I will continue to read science fiction although not in the glutonous amounts of my glory days. As for continuing the series, I will most likely do so. The book has more of an epic scope to it than most science fiction can ever reach, although I won't truly know until I finish reading the series if that scope can be carried out to its fullness.