Not as good as the previous books. Still very good. Coyote makes contact with Earth. There is political dealings to reach an agreement. Rebels and we learn more about the Coyote native species. ( )

Another good read in the Coyote series, this novel follows much the same pattern as the previous two, but more smoothly and with a bit more polish. The construction is not quite as choppy; in fact, the disjointedness of this novel was low key enough that I might not have noticed it if not for the brief foray into first person narrative by one of the characters to chronicle a trip back to Earth and the similarly (but more so) disjointed form of the two preceding novels.

The politics of this story -- that is, heavy-duty political drama within the story -- made it feel a bit more momentous than its predecessors, but the engaging voice of most of the narrative was not at all damaged by this, making for an improved tone overall, and the "surprise" ending (while not terribly surprising) was interesting as well. Coyote Frontier did not take the "and the adventure continues" approach to finishing, in a departure from some previous precedent in the series, but rather bracketed the story with some looking back from the future kind of feel, which tends to lend more of a sense of hope to a story when done well (and it was done reasonably well in this case). For my taste, that neither really added to the book nor detracted from it, but simply made it stand out as distinctly different from its predecessors in the series.

Consistent with the second book, I am once again disappointed at the handling of technological progress. Centuries pass, and technology (apart from space travel) is largely the same as we might find believable only about twenty years from now. What little technological progress occurs tends to happen off-page, Somewhere Else. It is apparently impossible for the people at the center of the story, on Coyote, to achieve any progress apart from (too-rapidly, really) reinventing skills they surely did not bring with them from Earth. Nobody has, apparently, even managed to figure out how to make wire from mined ductile metals, but highly efficient logging operations take only a generation to develop, starting with a bunch of suburbanite scientists and military officers from the first book. University: check. Clear-cutting: check. Tailored wool suits: check. Electrical generators: not on your life, despite an overabundance of people with engineering skills, and despite an apparent crisis of generator shortage.

Technology is not the only problem I have with suspension of disbelief, but it is a stand-out issue that begs to be used as the example. The story itself, however, was good. Characterization was decently managed, including actual character development. Some of the politics got a bit silly, especially at the fringes, but the shift in focus to more direct political subplots made things interesting. The narrative voice was generally quite engaging. It's worth a read.
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Satisfying conclusion to the Coyote Trilogy.

Steele has done a masterful job of world-building with his imagining of Earth's first attempt to colonize a planet outside the home solar system, and turns his lens this time on what might happen to the tough little world if it had to grow up and put on shoes.

Technological advances since the original colonizing ship left Earth have broken the FTL barrier, and what had been a remote and struggling society now must cope with becoming a functioning member of a galactic partnership. Their ability to export raw materials to a dying Earth, and to import technologies to solidify their foothold on Coyote bring both practical and ethical challenges. And just to put the cherry on top, Steele harkens back to something planted early in the first novel, which sends things spinning off in an entirely new plane, even as the trilogy's basic story is winding down. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2015/09/review-of-coyote-frontier-by-allen.html ( )

frontier scifi stuff, really great stuff ( )