It’s a neat idea. What if Edgar Rice Burroughs was right? What if Mars really was a dying planet, the heir to a once lofty civilization? What if fierce creatures roamed the jungles of Venus? Stirling takes this notion and runs with it…in the context of the post-World War II world we actually had. The Space Race wasn’t a race to the Moon—it was a race to establish bases on Venus and Mars, and to maintain parity in a new imperial scramble.

As I say, it’s a neat idea; and consequently I’d had high hopes for this book. As it is, I’m disappointed.* The Venusian setting is nifty; the characters have possibilities; the native cultures are interesting; the wildlife is nicely exotic; American technology circa 1988 is both similar and different from what we actually had, and in appropriate ways. It’s a nice piece of world-building. But Stirling made a number of plot decisions that I find quite inexplicable, and turned a book with real possibilities into one that’s merely so-so.

There’s a sequel on the way, set on Mars, that I intend to read when it comes out in paperback; the problems were with the plot of this particular book, and not with the setting or series as such. So I can hope that this one was simply a little rushed, and the next one will be better. Oh, well.

* I seem to have been disappointed by a lot of books recently. I’m not sure why that is. I don’t feel particularly jaundiced.