Steele Allen 01

Reviews & Overviews by Rod Cameron

Coyote Rising - Allen Steele

Following on from my review of Allen Steele’s Coyote last month, you will no doubt remember that the planet, or strictly moon, Coyote was located in a solar system 40 light years from Earth. The first book, Coyote concerned the colonisation of this moon by a 100 people who were escaping from a totalitarian American government. They manage to hijack the government’s flagship spacecraft, travel to Coyote, land there and survive their first year in a hostile environment. At the end of the book, a second spacecraft arrives containing 1000 colonists and soldiers from another totalitarian regime on Earth with greedy eyes.

Coyote Rising is written in the same style as the first – disjointed diaries, journals and more traditional narrative, and this style again works well in building up momentum quickly. The colonists decide to disappear rather than suffer under the newly arrived, oppressive regime which repeats the social ills that they had hoped to leave behind on Earth. So inevitably the original colonists have to become terrorists and fight for their world.

If I had to make a criticism of the series, it would be that the alien life-forms are a bit thin on the ground. I would have liked to see a lot more development of the eco-systems. The plot is well thought out though, to the extent that it doesn’t feel like a middle book in a trilogy, and the story is very readable, with excellent characterisations, and I have no hesitation in recommending it. The third book in the series is called Coyote Frontier and is available in paperback.

Publisher: Orbit
Date: 2005
Pages: 515 Pages
Price: £6.99
ISBN: 1-84149-368-6
Format: Paperback
Reviewed by: Rod Cameron
Date Reviewed: March 2006

Coyote Rising - Allen Steele
Following on from my review of Allen Steele’s Coyote last month, you will no doubt remember that the planet, or strictly moon, Coyote was located in a solar system 40 light years from Earth. The first book, Coyote concerned the colonisation of this moon by a 100 people who were escaping from a totalitarian American government. They manage to hijack the government’s flagship spacecraft, travel to Coyote, land there and survive their first year in a hostile environment. At the end of the book, a second spacecraft arrives containing 1000 colonists and soldiers from another totalitarian regime on Earth with greedy eyes. Coyote Rising is written in the same style as the first – disjointed diaries, journals and more traditional narrative, and this style again works well in building up momentum quickly. The colonists decide to disappear rather than suffer under the newly arrived, oppressive regime which repeats the social ills that they had hoped to leave behind on Earth. So inevitably the original colonists have to become terrorists and fight for their world. If I had to make a criticism of the series, it would be that the alien life-forms are a bit thin on the ground. I would have liked to see a lot more development of the eco-systems. The plot is well thought out though, to the extent that it doesn’t feel like a middle book in a trilogy, and the story is very readable, with excellent characterisations, and I have no hesitation in recommending it. The third book in the series is called Coyote Frontier and is available in paperback.
Publisher: Orbit Date: 2005 Pages: 515 Pages Price: £6.99 ISBN: 1-84149-368-6 Format: Paperback Reviewed by: Rod Cameron Date Reviewed: March 2006