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Fossil Hunter | Rating | |
| A | |||
| Robert J. Sawyer | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| The Quintaglio Ascension | Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, Foreigner | ||
Sawyer's tale of dinosaurs continues, and well it does, too. The world of the Quintaglios is coming to an end. It is, in fact, a moon arund a gas giant, and it is too near the planet to be stable. In five hundred years or so, it'll be rubble. So they need to get off their world, an imperitive much more important than anything JFK proposed. This isn't a race, it's an evacuation.
In light of the threat, the Emperor has authorized a worldwide account of resources. They're going to need to know what they have in order to know what they can use to lift themselves from 16th or 17th century technology to high enough to leave. And one of Afsan's sons is leading the geological portion of the tally. And he's feeling the pressure his father's accomplishments put on him.
This is a more complex book than the first. This isn't just a book about discovery, although that is a major element. But there is also a challenge to the Emperor's rule, one that threatens to derail the entire evacuation. If it succeeds, things will go back to the way they were before Afsan screwed up their world view. And the planet will be doomed by their dereliction.
The discovery plotline, meanwhile, is also a fascinating read. Toroca, Afsan's son, is leading that, and finds more about his world's past than anyone had any right to expect. It's wonderful to finally know how their world can be such a parallel to the world of the Cretaceous era. That was a significant nuissance in the first book, but it's gone, now.
There's a lot of political stuff in here, but given Quintaglio politics, it's not boring. It's eased a bit by Toroca's finds and figuring as he works out the origins of the race. I consider this a very good book of discovery, and a very good sequel.
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