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The year is 2070, and Ben has a vision. It’s grandiose, yet achievable, and he has the technical skills and brains to make it happen. A city in the sky; a floating mass, above the earth, made up of thousands of ‘skyboats’. They can interlock and become stable, allowing people to walk between the individual boats with stability. He’s built a multi-million dollar business up from scratch, Skyboat Industries, and so has the money to back his vision. If it all goes wrong, he reasons, it won’t matter because it’s his money that he’s lost.
As they’re launching the Skyboats that will interconnect to form Sky City in the middle of the Nevada desert, the ground becomes unstable. The very earth is tearing itself apart as a super massive earth quake rips through North America. While the government is quick to place the blame on Bed and Skyboat Industries, the actual truth was that ‘anti earth quake measures’ along the San Andreas Fault had failed spectacularly and had somehow triggered this world shattering natural disaster. Now, Ben, his family and allies must somehow prove that they weren’t responsible for the mega quake, and keep the business and fledgling Sky City out of the Department of Space’s hands.
As far as near-future Sci-Fi goes, The Skyworld Sage – Foundation is a fun take on technology, natural resources and how the world may go. Priest alludes to the United States being a nation divided, with States themselves declaring independence from each other and splitting apart. There’s regular mentions of colonies on the moon and on Mars, and references to the Department of Space having lost control of them. It’s why they’re so determined to gain control of Ben’s businesses and Sky City. It makes for an interesting narrative and also provides many fun, if completely and utterly inept characters from the government department.
My only problem is that the conversations, while often hilarious, were somewhat static. The conversations are often laid out as “Ben said,” “Adam said”, “Martin said”. A little variation for the utterances would have been nice (as flat as that sounds in itself). It means that, as rich as one’s imagination may be, it’s difficult to visualise a funny remark being delivered in the correct way if it’s followed by [character] ‘said’.
Over all, though, this was a fun read. And I’m looking forward to further instalments in the Skyworld Saga.
S. A
This book was originally reviewed as part of the Reedsy Discovery ARC program. You can read the original review here.
You can buy SkyWorld Saga: Foundation here.
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