On

Adam Roberts has, as in his excellent 'Yellow Blue Tibia' provided an elegant and hugely enjoyable reveal that allows all the pieces of this strange world to fall into place. Curiously, for a book where precipices and vertiginous landscapes abound, the work is about a fall from grace, and the extreme price some are willing others to pay to set things aright once more. It is a harsh world seen through the eyes of a child where innocence is soon lost amidst the brutality of a deprived world. Adam Roberts doesn't spare his characters, so expect all kinds of brutality, familial, societal and more. But it serves a purpose, it adds to the texture of the world that Adam Roberts creates and it makes one wonder if the price of raising humanity from a degraded state is worth the price. I have greatly enjoyed all of the books I have read by Roberts. His worlds and the dilemmas their inhabitants occupy have a way of getting under my skin. To make me think.