Silverhair (1999)

This was a relaxing and interesting book to read. I enjoyed the story and will be looking to aquire the rest of the series. Sometimes it is good to get away from the really in depth, deep and what I will call the current marketing direction of the media (i.e. vampires, which I am not in to), and just read a well written, thoughtful and light piece of work (which is not always a Stephen Baxter trait). There was enough action and the characters were well developed. Even though they were mammoths it was easy to relate to them. It will be interesting to find out how the rest of the family grows. ( )

A small group of mammoths is alive and well in remote Siberia in our times. Stephen Baxter tells us how they live in a world that's changing from what they know in their sagas and legends. Their enemy is, of course, the Lost Ones, as the mammoths call us humans.

Baxter's written better books, and this is no Watership Down (or Empire of the Ants, which is my favourite animal book). It's not bad, though, and the mammoths seem pretty well researched, at least they're somewhat inhuman. They have their own culture, quite different from us humans.

Since the book was so fast and easy to read, I'm going to continue to the next part of the trilogy - after all, the book gets some pretty strange ideas in the end. In any case, I can't really recommend Silverhair unless you're really into mammoths or books starring animals in general. However, there's lots of violence and cruelty towards animals in this book, so the most sensitive animal lovers, stay away! (Review based on the Finnish translation.)

(Original review at my review blog) ( )

On a remote island off Siberia, a small family of Woolly Mammoths, the last of their kind, live out their lives. But then humans come onto the island and soon the Mammoths are running for their lives.

The rest of Stephen Baxter’s books that I’ve read were very enjoyable but this was disappointing for me. The story was very slow, plodding along, and mammoth dung seemed to be mentioned at least once a page, which kind of got a little annoying. It started getting a little better towards the end, but not a great deal and I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy the sequel. ( )