Spin and Axis by Robert Charles Wilson

Today, I'm bringing you two old reviews I wrote years ago. I posted them to Goodreads in the fall of 2016, but I read the books before that. These are the first two of a series, and for reasons I don't remember now, I did not review the third book. I know that I adored the first book, but my love diminished over the series.

 

Review #1: Spin

 

I loved this book. Just flat out loved it. Sci-fi isn't usually my thing, as I get confused by the hard core sciencey parts - which I did here - but it took nothing away from the book.

The premise is that a strange membrane has surrounded the earth and hidden the stars. Outside of the membrane time moves much faster than on earth - like millions of years vs. a year Earth's time. It's kind of like outside the Earth is Narnia, but with fewer divine lions. People start to call it the "Spin", hence the title. The problem with the Spin is that with time moving as it is, instead of the death of the sun taking billions of years, on Earth it will only take about 40-50 years. Yeah.

What I like about the story is that instead of trying to tackle the global implications, Wilson focuses on the lives of only a handful of people. Granted, they are important people who can harness the necessary science and resources to learn about the nature of the spin, but it's only partially about that. The crux of the story is Tyler, our protagonist's love for the twins, Dianne and Jason.

Tyler is the son of their maid, but he becomes best friends with Jason despite their differences and he falls in love with Dianne who may or may not return his affections. Dianne is a bit messed up and uses Tyler, but she's decent. Jason is probably the best character in the whole book. He's rich and a genius, but he's so nice. Not that rich geniuses can't be nice, but in fiction they tend towards snobbish or condescending and Jason isn't at all. He's strong, passionate, and devoted. He is a bit broken himself as he doesn't let himself love anyone outside his family and Tyler, but he has a mission - to save the earth. They do this by using the time difference to their advantage and terraforming/colonizing Mars.

The layout of the book fits its contents. The story jumps forward and back through time all from Tyler's first person perspective. I personally found the flashbacks more gripping than the present because that's where we get to spend time with Jason. I think despite the book being from Tyler's POV, this book is really Jason's story. Even Tyler would probably admit this since he knows he fixated on the twins. At one point he comments that when the Spin happened, Dianne grabbed religion, Jason grabbed science and Tyler grabbed onto the twins. 


Review #2: Axis

 

Just saying the name of Spin to myself makes me sigh – that book was so good. I don’t really know what took me so long to get to Axis, the sequel to Spin (sigh) but I finally did get here and well… yeah… here I am and it's all right.

It’s still a good book, but it just did not have the same effect on me that its predecessor had. First, Axis no longer focuses on Tyler and Diane, but introduces Lise, a young woman who lost her father to a mystery she needs to answer, her ex, Bryan who cannot handle anything more exciting than white bread, and Turk, an irresponsible pilot. This is our love triangle, people and it is tame. Poor Bryan and his world of stability do not stand the slightest chance. But, even though these are most of our main characters, the book isn’t really about them.

Isaac, an aptly named sacrificial lamb is the most important character in the story, even if he is one of the most underdeveloped. Spin introduced us to the Hypotheticals, mysterious beings who made the Spin happen and Isaac is not so much a person as he is an experiment to communicate with them. The idea of creating a child solely as an experiment is dark, but it’s hard to picture Isaac having any other purpose in life. He is a blank slate child with no affection for anyone and very few interests. Isaac was so robotic that I couldn’t bring myself to get too upset about his treatment.

I think that is part of the overall problem with this one. I couldn’t really get into it the way I could with Spin. It felt distant and underdeveloped. I missed Tyler and, of course, Jason – the best one of them all. I never like it when I find a sequel and it’s not about the same characters. No matter how good a story is or how interesting the new characters are, I still crave the old ones – I’m looking at you, Korra – I demand more Zuko and Azula!

But I feel that was only part of the problem. I think Wilson was counting on the reader caring more about who/what the Hypotheticals are than I do. What fascinated me about Spin was looking at how such a monumental change affected the human race and the different ways people coped with that. In Axis, we are introduced to a whole new planet with bizarre ash storms, but the impact those have is only touched on lightly. People seem to have migrated to the new planet with very little reservation. I would have liked more world-building on the new planet.

There is one more book in the series, Vortex, and I hope that it can tie everything together. I hope that Axis just suffers from being the second book in a trilogy, unable to stand alone and tasked with setting the stage for the final act.

I hope I when I get to Vortex, I’ll be gushing about how wonderful the book I just read was.

I hope.


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