I read ‘Saturn Returns’ way back in June last year, it was tough to get into but there was enough there for me to enjoy what I was reading and look forward to the next instalment. Fast forward to yesterday morning and I have a copy of ‘Earth Ascendant’ (the sequel) to read on the way to work, it’s just under three hundred pages long so I thought it would be a nice short read to take me up to the weekend.
As it turns out, this read took me up until yesterday evening where I put it down and decided to give something else a go instead...
As a rule, I’m pretty good at remembering past events in a series when reading the latest book even if it’s been a while since I last read any of the books. While ‘Earth Ascendant’ drops you right into things, and expects you to land on your feet, I also found that it was mentioning things that I was sure I couldn’t remember having happened in the first book. This made it really difficult for me to get into things as I felt like I was constantly playing ‘catch up’, something you really don’t want to have to do in a high concept book like this!
Either Williams had taken a few liberties with the timeline or... I happened to flick through the book to the acknowledgements section where Williams thanks MonkeyBrain Books for the opportunity to write ‘Cenotaxis’, a book that acts as a bridge between ‘Saturn Returns’ and ‘Earth Ascendant’...
It turns out that I’d read Book 1 and then started on Book 2 without realising there was a Book 1A! I felt like I’d fought with ‘Earth Ascendant’ enough to be able to justifiably use this as an excuse to bail out here. If I see a copy of ‘Cenotaxis’ then I may pick it up but this isn’t one that I’ll be searching really hard for...
Interesting to hear that Greame. I've only just read Saturn Returns and enjoyed it quite a lot. I've got Cenotaxis on the to-be-read pile after a recommendation by suciul on the SFFWorld forums (plus I found it cheap enough on the t'internet). Still, I'm looking forward to picking it up though!
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