Like someone trying to explain their dreams. ( )

I think it goes where other people have gone before, and better. It reminds me of Lovecraft, also of Michael Moorcock, but worse. I see how somebody could like this book, but it is not my cup of tea. ( )

Weird, exciting story. Ladies with faces for eyes, people who sprout trees that fruit (and they eat the fruit!) madness! ( )

This book reminded me of Robinson's book The Years of Rice and Salt rather than his books on Mars. That's because it is more fantasy than science fiction and quite philosophical. I think if I had to choose I would rather have KSR's science fiction but this was quite good and it certainly made me think.

This is the story of a man from another planet (probably Earth) who ends up on a planet that is virtually all ocean except for a spine of granitic rock that splits the ocean into a south and north basin. The man, called Thel by tree people who find him first (because in their language Thel means treeless one), came ashore with a woman whom he calls the swimmer. She was taken captive by the spine kings and Thel decides to find her. He does and frees her and some other captives. One of these, Tinou, takes a golden mirror out of a hut belonging to the spine kings before he leads them off to his people. The golden mirror is part crystal ball, part gateway to another dimension. Thel takes it from Tinou and he, the swimmer and one of the tree people continue to travel west on the spine. The spine seems endless but is it? The mirror may be a way to return to their previous lives but Thel and the swimmer end up in a kind of utopia and Thel forgets about his past. Until...well you'll have to read it yourself. ( )

This short novel was a surprising page-turner for me. Robinson wrote it in 1990 but it only saw UK publication in 2000. The story is fairly slight; a man awakes on a beach with no memory of his past. He awakes next to a woman who he only knows as "the swimmer". The next morning, she has disappeared, and he sets out to find her. In the process, he explores the strange world that he and many other different characters inhabit; it appears to consist of a single, world-girdling strip of land separating two seas which may be planetary in extent.

Along the way, he is told different stories about the world's origin. Are we in a fantasy world? Are we in some sort of construct? Has this world been terraformed? A range of possible answers are suggested; the overall effect is rather like reading Wolfe's 'Book of the New Sun', because everything is familiar yet strange, and there are hints of powerful forces off-stage, or lost in time.

Unlike any other book of Robinson's I've read, it nonetheless kept me turning the pages even though the focus is tight on the protagonist and his companion, the swimmer. The ending could be allegory, or it could point to multiple layers of existence. It's vivid, and haunting, but not suited to anyone who wants a resolution or other sorts of easy answer. ( )