Rift (1999) (edit title/settings)

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  “It's almost a race against futility as they struggle to solve two seemingly impossible problems: survival, and the destruction of an entire planet.
  
  
  However, just like any good SF book, despite how the obstacles stack up to the height of a 100-floor building, coincidences occur to put the situations in the protagonists' favor. They may end up battered, bruised, starved, dehydrated, poisoned, or imprisoned, but eventually, they will succeed...and they learn something in the bargain.
  
  
  Kay Kenyon virtually puts her char.s through the wringer as she creates a world whose every aspect is poison to the human body. The air they breathe induces a hacking cough that kills them before they're thirty, a tinge of red that spreads through the land kills the food and poisions drinkable water, and if that's not enough, she inhabits Lithia with another alien race, the Orthong, who kill human males at the slightest provocation and capture human females for breeding. The worldbuilding is an unveiling of how truly hostile an unfamiliar planet can be. It may look safe from above, but even the slightest change in the air, in the grass, in the water, or even in the earth, can be dangerous to the human body. Death is an eventuality whether it be slow or fast.
  
  
  The story doesn't truly get interesting until you reach the middle of it. I believe it starts to make sense near to the ending when more foreshadowing occurs of Loon, the feral girl mentioned in the Synop. The first few chapters are just your normal creep, run, attack, hunt scenarios where the protags struggle for survival. It is unbelievably slow at getting to the point, and I didn't even believe there was a point until I reached the ending. I thought it was your normal catch, capture, and destroy scenario and there were no finer lines underneath.
  
  
  (The fiery hells of spoilers are getting to me. I'm becoming unbelievable vague.)
  
  
  Moving on, there's two points to the story: The destruction of the bomb, and...(I'll give you a clue) the Somaformers. The Somaformers are a religion. They believe that humans have sinned by trying to change/terraform the planet instead of changing themselves. The Somaformers are a clever little plot contruct which reveals the importance of changing the body, instead of the world. The arrows goes like this: Reeve-Loon-Somaformers-Orthong in that order. They're all gonna save the world...the human race is a plus.
  
  
  ”

  Jam L wrote this review Thursday, August 20, 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No