Once more, Orbit have done their trick of releasing a whole series over a very short timespan – and that’s fine with me when on completing the first book, Equations of Life, I was able to immediately dive straight into the sequel.
Welcome to the Metrozone, England’s last surviving city. We are experiencing technical difficulties and the threat of extreme violence. Please report anything suspicious to what’s left of the authorities. The blurb goes on for a little bit longer, but if you haven’t read the first book, yet, then anything else I add will become a spoiler – so I’m stopping right there. Suffice to say that Russian refugee Samuil Petrovitch is still up to his ears in a lot of trouble – in between trying to unravel one of the most crucial equations in the universe…
I’ll say this for Morden – he doesn’t think small. There is a stagey, epic feel to this dystopian vision, which once more whips into action and sets off at a rollicking pace that doesn’t pause for breath until the end. And, again, I was swept along with the all the improbable twists and turns, more than happy to suspend my disbelief – most of the time. The story has only moved forward a short while since Equations of Life, but this being Morden country, plenty has occurred during the interval. Again, I’m not saying more, as we are otherwise in Spoiler Territory. There were several plotlines with dangling threads that I assumed would be neatly tucked away in the subsequent novels. Well, they were tucked, alright – though there isn’t anything neat in Theories of Flight.
Morden immediately took the story off in a completely unexpected direction – which left me feeling just a tad frustrated, as I had expected – and wanted – to spend more time with some of the enjoyable, eccentric characters who had appeared in the first book. However, the upside is (and probably why he did it) that if for any reason you do read the books out of sequence, you probably won’t find it a particularly jarring experience as they are more or less standalone.
Any grizzles? Well, once more, Samuil is subjected to a great deal of physical punishment and near the end of the book I became frankly incredulous that anyone could remain conscious, never mind still able to retaliate on any level. I’m still not sure why Morden feels it necessary to subject his suffering protagonist to quite so much pain and injury – it cannot be on the grounds of wanting to ‘keep it real’. There isn’t all that much reality about the premise, if you step out of Morden’s frenetic world and take a couple of deep breaths to think it through. Other than that caveat, once again, I found Morden’s pace and plotting irresistible and I’m looking forward to plunging into the third book in the series. However, this time, I’m going to take a break and read something else. Something slower and less exhausting…
8/10
