I've read a few of Womack's dystopian future/DryCo books. The very first one I read, Random Acts of Senseless Violence, was an amazing 5 star romp (williamt review). But Terraplane is the least of this bunch.Terraplane is put at an immediate disadvantage: people in the future are somewhat unemotional and disaffected. In other words, they're pretty boring. The action in the plot comes out in dribs and drabs. Time travel. Ugh. A lot of it feels repetitive as well. A lot of it feels repetitive as well.In Womack's future they speak a kind of pidgin English. Even the first person's narration is in this dialect. Woof... it's a tough slog, for sure. I recognize that it's a really difficult thing to do as an author... create your own language/dialect. The best ever is Anthony Burgess and A Clockwork Orange. Genius! But if you're not genius and it doesn't work out, then it's awfully painful to read. I like this description comparing time travel to drinking vodka.QOTD"We're not in the past, are we?" I said. "Not truly." "Certainly we are not in past," she said. "How many times I tell you causality prohibits? You cannot drink vodka already drunk."- Terraplane, discussing time/world travelOh well... Next!Courtesy this story, I think I'll try something more popular and current: The Fastest-Selling Adult Novel in History: Paula Hawkins’ ‘The Girl On The Train’. We shall see.yow, bill
My second excursion into the Dryco world. Like the first one, Ambient, the reader is dropped into the future world without much explication. I'm not sure that reading this as a standalone would be much fun as a lot of the background of the Dryco world is slantly alluded to and is not explained at all.But, sticking with it until about a third of the way in, I finally got my bearings. The tale ends up being a time-travel/alternate history story with definitive predictions on the continuance of the Reagan's "Age of Cruelty" will mean deep into the 21st Century. The twist on the alternate history trope is a nice one - I won't spoil it as it was interesting to figure out what the event was where our and the alternate history diverged.
Do You like book Terraplane (1998)?
Terraplane is Womack's second novel, and is set in the same universe as Ambient, his first. I found it to be a much more enjoyable than Ambient, however. It maintained what I loved about the first book (the dialect they speak), but had much richer characters and a more intriguing plot. Furthermore, the plot is an alternate history/world plot, which I love.Based on the occasional reference made about O'Malley, this story seems to begin several years after the events in Ambient. It's not very specific however, and not terribly relevant as the story quickly leaves the world entirely.
—Nicholas Barone
