The story starts with our hero on the slopes of Mt. Olympus, the largest volcano in the solar system…
Oh wait, no it doesn’t. In fact I have a hard time recalling if the venerable mountain was even mentioned before one of the characters began to climb it in the last 10 or so pages of the book.
Ah well, what’s in a name right? Kevin J. Anderson writes a pretty reasonable novel in my experience, and this one doesn’t let you down. Sort of the typical monster-of-the-week style story with the your average characters, and no real crazy plot-twists to throw you overboard, this one is a fun read. Poul Anderson did a quote for the cover:
An exciting story… one feels that this may very well be the way the conquest of Mars will happen.
Gotta agree. Unfortunately not much more to say. I enjoyed reading it, but I’m done reading it now and it doesn’t have anything else to offer me. I don’t even have a particularly memorable quote. With a very human quality to the characters, and an arid and dead feeling to the planet, it’s a gritty and realistic tale of homesteading the martian plain. Now, off to powells we go for a trade-in!