Cloud Warrior

A quite decent post-apocalypic tale with western overtones. It does however slow quite a bit around the half-way mark.
Its also a very particular western ie. Dances with Wolves, which has been done in sci-fi fashion on other occasions most notably Avatar, although Enemy Mine is similar.
I was one of the few who quite disliked the big film mentioned above, and was actually rooting for the bad guys frankly :P . This however is a better rendition of the story with multiple pretty decent characters.

Ultimately though its still a Chosen One narrative with a lot more ‘magic’ than i was expecting in a sci-fi dystopia and goes very heavy on the predestination which, as usual with prophecy, robs events of a lot of their urgency.

There’s also show more some minor problems such as some stupid future-speak, although not as bad as the like of the kids from Beyond Thunder Dome.

Finally this one is very much a Book One which comes with its own issues.

Edit: It just occurred to me that this makes an interesting juxtaposition with the Time Machine, where the surface dwellers here are physically repulsive rather than the underground ones but the underground dwellers are still the monstrous ones.... show less

I read this post-nuclear holocaust book as a kid and liked it, so I thought I'd give it a try again. Given most second hand science fiction books are $2, the barrier to entry is admittedly quite low as well. This book revolves around two groups -- the Amtrak Federation (a military society formed from survivors of those who crewed MX missile trains, a real system of roaming trains carrying nuclear missiles from the late 1980s and early 1990s -- the idea was that something which moved was harder for the Russians to find) and the "Mutes" (the civilan survivors of the holocaust, who are now mutated by radiation). Its a good book, although very different from the Asimov I've been reading recently. That's a good thing, because I think I need show more a bit of an Asimov break to be honest.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Patrick_Tilley/Cloud_Warrior.html show less

I enjoyed the story much more than the writing style. It's a unique environment that the author created and it was a very easy read due the story being pretty good.