Axis
Wildly praised by readers and critics alike, Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin won science fiction’s highest honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Now, in Spin’s direct sequel, Wilson takes us to the "world next door"--the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world--and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.
Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world will become very alien indeed--as the nature of time is once again twisted, by entities unknown.
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this outstanding sequel to Wilson's Hugo-winning Spin (2005), we are taken to the mysterious planet Equatoria, a world apparently engineered for humanity by the inscrutable machine intelligences known as the Hypotheticals. Turk Findley, a man with a criminal past, runs an aeronautical charter service on the newly settled planet. Lise Adams, who hires Turk, is a would-be journalist searching for her vanished father, a scientist obsessed with the Hypotheticals and their illegal life extension technology. Meanwhile, young Isaac, genetically manipulated by rogue scientists so that he may become a conduit between humanity and the AIs, is coming of age, and something enormous and unknown is assembling itself far underground. The various science and thriller plot elements are successful, but this is first and foremost a novel of character. Turk and Lise, who might well be played by Bogart and Bacall, are powerfully drawn protagonists, and their strong presence in the novel makes the wonders provided all the more satisfying. Those unfamiliar with Spin may flounder a bit, but Wilson's fans will be ecstatic. (Sept.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Critics enjoyed Axis as much as they did Spinâ€"but suggested that readers embarking on the second novel in the series may wish to start with the first, which introduces Robert Charles Wilson’s compelling, fully developed characters and provides a context for Earth’s time warp. Be warned: this is the second book of a planned trilogy, and it has that getting-deeper-in-our-world-without-resolving-everything approach at which middle books excel. But even for readers unfamiliar with Equatoria, Axis is a suspenseful, smart, and well-crafted book with characters who, even amid alien, AI creatures, face real-life dilemmas. Although Axis provides very few answers to questions raised in Spin, it starts to fit the details of life and life quests on Equatoria (which somewhat resembles Australia) into a larger framework. In sum: another masterful addition to the series.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
Following old leads to her father's associates from his time at the university, Lise Adams is searching for the secret of his disappearance. She ends up trekking across the desert with Turk, who runs a tourist plane and whom she met in the midst of her divorce, and Diane, who, like many of her father's associates, is a Fourth, whose lifespan has been artificially extended. Fourths are illegal on Earth and have a complex series of cultural checks placed on them on Mars. But some of the people Lise is after are further out on the fringe than most Fourths. The desert is seeded with an ashfall containing the remnants of hypothetical machines, bizarre structures that grow overnight and mostly disintegrate quickly. Lise finds some answers to her questions with a community of Fourths who've gone nearly too far, replicating a disastrous experiment Diane's brother first attempted, and that was repeated on Mars. This absolutely worthy, abundantly marvelous sequel to Spin (2005) conjures humanity after an event so strange it's almost unimaginable. Schroeder, Regina
Customer Reviews
OK entertainment.
OK book but not as entertaining as the first - reader who hasn't read first should do so and perhaps skip this book for the final section.
Not the same genre....
Spin was so new, and exciting. It was well thought out and had purpose. The sequel was nothing but a mystery, and not a very good one at that. There was some minor homage to the original story with the inclusion of Diane, but Spin was something that was almost impossible to repeat.
If you haven't read Spin and are looking for a novel about another planet and the mysteries following the protagonist and her missing father, it might be interesting. It just wasn't so when I was so wowed by Spin.
Good follow up to the original
Overall I enjoyed this book. It was a good follow up to the original, and if you've read other books by this author you'll soon find that you aren't always going to get neat tidy answers to everything. If your the type of person that needs everything wrapped up in a nice little red bow, this book, and probably most of his books probably aren't for you.
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