Book Review: Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson

Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published August 2015 by Gollancz

Crashing Heaven is first rate second generation cyberpunk, hard boiled and gritty as a granola mixed with rocks so on the surface I should have loved this. This bold debut novel is so full of ideas I feel like many of them will go over many readers heads. Al Robertson certainly went for it with this book.

Set in the aftermath of both ecological devastation and a war with AI overlords on one of the space stations orbiting the dead earth. there are lots of new interesting details The AI's who control the weave (a more virtual reality future internet) have established themselves as gods, many of the cyborgs live in wooden shells, and our main character has a vituual puppet who he uses for guidance as he tries to solve the mystery of who killed his now dead Ex-lover who is only alive as simulation based on data called a fetch.

The level of gee-whiz inventiveness is turned up to 11,and many of the novels best moments are found in the banter mostly internal between Jack and his puppet Fist. Fist often comments on the scenes being stand-in for the reader, being for example disgusted by the cheezy romance between Jack and his ex Andrea. The only weakness in the setting was that I felt the space stattion was not as wild or Dangerous feeling to me as I think the author intended.

I think this is a pretty cool novel and there were times when I really enjoyed it, but failed to connect to the material at other times. As inventive and cool as the world building was I was not super into the narrative. I would find myself losing attention, my mind would wonder. I don't know or can't explain because at other times I was enjoying the book alot. I think it is me, not the book but more than once I thought about letting it go.

I pushed through and I am glad I read it. Certainly this novel is an heir to the legacy of Cyberpunk, and certainly it carries the torch well for a debut. That said I believe it will not bee the shock to the system that the Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon had on the scene back when it came out. You can certainly feel the William Gibson influence dripping off the page and in some ways Crashing Heaven is more accessible than Gibson.

So I didn't really connect with this book, but that doesn't mean it is not good. On paper all the elements are there, but didn't connect with me. The setting of the space station was very cool, I think it would have been neat if that was not revealed until deep into the novel.

None the less I think if you enjoy cyberpunk this is a safe bet. Overall I think most readers will enjoy for the inventive settings and details alone.