Allen Steele

Coyote Rising

In my earlier review of Coyote, I described it as a fairly normal interstellar colonization story with a hint of politics in the background. Coyote Rising, the sequel, makes those politics somewhat more explicit, but they are still far short of actually driving the story in a manner similar to, for example, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. That's not a good thing when the point of the story is supposed to be the politics.

The original colonists on Coyote were rebels, political dissidents who stole their spacecraft from the dictatorial tyrrany that built it. They had years to settle into life on their new world, but the government on Earth (no longer the same one they had fled, though it's replacement is similarly collectivist) has used those years to build more colonization craft.

When those craft begin to arrive, they bring with them a corrosive ideology and the soldiers to enforce it. The original colonists are forced to flee their homes and live in hiding, scratching out a living from the harsh and unfamilar planet while looking for a way to reclaim their planet from the new arrivals. It's a perfect settling for a retelling of the American Revolution, and the author makes a good attempt. But the traditional weaknesses of science fiction writing are poor characterization and difficult in telling an emotionally moving story, and this book suffers from those flaws in spades.

That said, it's by no means a failure. It's just not a smashing success. If you enjoyed Coyote you'll enjoy it's sequel, and it's easy to pass a few hours in the reading without regretting them.

Coyote

Imagine a socialist paradise that bankrupts itself to develop a single interstellar spacecraft, the USS Alabama, designed to escape the solar system and colonize a new world, called Coyote. Imagine that the colonists for this new world have been carefully selected by the government, emphasizing political loyalty as much as scientific knowledge. Imagine that in this dystopian society, dissidents who remember the dream of Liberty are regularly rooted out, arrested, and shipped to reeducation camps in cattle cars. And, finally, imagine that the captain of the USS Alabama, one Robert E Lee, is just such a dissident -- as yet undetected, and leader of a conspiracy to seize the Alabama, replacing her crew on the eve of launch with a new set of colonists. Colonists who remember freedom.

If you can imagine that without straining your suspension of disbelief, you'll do just fine with this novel, which presents a fairly normal interstellar colonization story with a hint of politics in the background. It's not a story that will make a vast emotional impact; in fact, many of the events which might be expected to have such an impact are downplayed. Don't come into this story hoping for a rousing tale of freedom versus oppression; it will not deliver that, and does not try. (That attempt appears to be reserved for the sequel, Coyote Rising).

While the book will hold your interest, it does not rate special notice. Colonization junkies will be disappointed by the lack of detailed challenges to be overcome related to the new world, and political junkies will be disappointed by the lack of rhetoric or emotional impact. If the book has a strong point, it would be interpersonal relations, and even that aspect is too weak to carry the whole story.

The only reason I can see to read this novel is to set up the sequel.

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