My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This absorbing novel is a sci-fi story mixed with an element of fantasy. In it the two main characters, Garland and Hedge, are in conflict through an event in their past which does not become obvious to the reader for quite a while. The Train to Nowhere is on a continuous journey with its “passengers” of Orphans and Landeds for reasons that are never explained. There is another community, Nomads, who are free to roam and trade “outside” the train. Garland feels a strong need to be free and to escape his controlled but comfortable life on the train. I liked the way that the author plunges the reader into life on the train and into the contrasting lives of Garland and Hedge. My curiosity about how this future came about led me to continue reading and the tale of each protagonist grabbed me from chapter 3. But I was disappointed not to find out what had caused the situation they were in. For example why was the train pulled by a team of 21 horses? And if there was no power available for transport how come there were computers everywhere, on and off the train, which would require much electricity? Had there been a catastrophe on Earth that led to overpopulation, or was overpopulation a major cause of this strange resulting stratification of society?
While I am a strong supporter of letting the characters in a book reveal the reasons behind the context in which they find themselves, I thought that there was not quite enough information given to explain some of the things that bothered me at the end. However, that is not to say that I didn’t enjoy Gloria Piper’s novel, because it was just that – novel! It was well written generally, with the exception of a couple of editing issues and the use of some expressions that did not sound correct. For example: “The trail faded at an upsurge in the prairie…” jarred my senses because “upsurge” is better referring to feelings rather than objects. And often characters “rotated” to look elsewhere when the simpler, more appropriate, verb “turned” sounds more “normal” and less like an acrobat.
I cared about Garland and was rooting for him and Mystery Rider right up to the last page. The relationship between these two and between Garland and Little Byte was very well done and Ms Piper shows a real talent for describing a characters inner thoughts and fears. There were many passages in the book when I would have liked to have seen fewer full stops and more commas and semi-colons etc. In other words a lot of times the frequent use of very many, very short, sentences had a kind of staccato effect which detracted from the descriptive flow of the scene portrayed on the page.
Fans of Orwell, Wyndham and Bradbury would enjoy this fascinating tale of conflict and sci-fi suspense. The imaginative use of computer terminology in everyday language, such as deleting and VR to mean dying and unreal; the skilful handling of emotions; and her originality for a tale well-told leads me to conclude that the author will attract many more fans in the future.
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