Sunstorm
01/09/2006 . Source: Sue Davies 
This is a sequel to 'Time's Eye' where Bisesa Dutt is sent on an incredible journey to an alternate Earth saved from extinction due to the intervention of mysterious watchers. Buy Sunstorm in the USA - or Buy Sunstorm in the UK  check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
This is a sequel to 'Time's Eye' where Bisesa Dutt is sent on an incredible journey to an alternate Earth saved from extinction due to the intervention of mysterious watchers.
Bisesa is back in London. Although she has five years of history, experience and the grey hairs to prove it, time has moved forward by one day. She is mystified why she has been shown so much only to be dumped back in her own time. Worse still, Bisesa has picked a hell of a day to arrive. The previously benign star known as the sun is experiencing a massive power flux, a sunstorm.
June the ninth is a bad day for the planet and the storm has proved the predictions of Dr Eugene Mangles are likely to come true, Earth won't survive the next solar storm in five years time.
Thrust into the limelight, Siobhan McGorran - the Astronomer Royal from England, attempts to pull together a plan for outwitting the universe's desire to extinguish Earth and all that lives and crawls on its surface. In the process, she finds love in a vacuum and simultaneously takes the weight of saving the human race and all those she loves upon her shoulders.
I was disappointed with the last book in this series for much the same reasons as this. The science is spectacularly drawn and I learnt a lot about the possibilities of manufacturing and production in space and on the Moon. It is a vision of huge scope and deserves to be widely read. My big disappointment is in the story and the characters. Bisesa, from the last book, has little to do with this story other than to pass on her knowledge of the watching orbs. She also is the person we follow on Earth when the storm hits. Other characters move in and out of the narrative but with the huge amounts of explanation needed, they often become monotonous mouthpieces for the next bit of physics we need to know.
Overall, the story is a good one but the necessity if imparting all this information makes for stop start reading. The writers cannot assume knowledge and they don't but it is hard to tell a complicated story like this without boring the reader.
Complications brought into the story by the background of the watching orbs means something and nothing. The something is that in the inevitable next book, possibly, just possibly, the watchers will come back. The nothing is what that knowledge adds to the story, it's a complication too far.
This book has grand themes and much to commend it and I cannot denigrate its credentials but I regret that the big story of the universe makes the human story appear so slight and trite.
Sue Davies
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