Not a dog, but not up to scratch either. (Coyote - Allen Steele)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Coyote - Allen Steele
Date:	10/10/05 (117 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good basic story, good characters, good scope for further stories.

Disadvantages: Lack of attention to detail, dodgy science, one part of the story doesn't "fit" with the rest.

Around 46 light years from Earth is the star of 47 Ursae Majoris. A major discovery leads scientists to believe that one of the moons orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris B, a gas giant, in this star system could be capable of sustaining life.

A new America, now a fascist state, pours all of its resources into creating an interstellar starship capable of traveling the huge distance to this new world, named Coyote, in the hopes that colonisation is possible.

What's not planned, though, is for the ship's captain, Robert E. Lee, to steal the ship during launch with the help of his mostly loyal crew. Also onboard are a number of 'dissidents', rescued during the final hours of the countdown and smuggled aboard the ship.

Creating a new colony on a foreign world, completely out of touch with Earth was always going to be difficult, but Captain Lee is going to have to deal with much more than an unknown planet. How much more complex and dangerous can it get when half the people haven't even been trained, that the crew still includes people loyal to the fascist regime and that there's no real data on Coyote other than it could probably support life?

Reading the blurb on the book ("An epic novel of space exploration") would suggest that Coyote was a science fiction novel. My first thought was that it would be something similar to Arthur C Clarke's 'Rendezvous with Rama', which is one of my favourite books. However, that's not really the case. Coyote's origin is as a series of eight short stories, all of which have been published elsewhere. While the overall picture of the colonisation of Coyote is always there, the focus at all times remains on the characters. It's very much about the people involved, which isn't really a pure science fiction story in my opinion and you could as easily be reading any other kind of exploration story as the science doesn't really feature that much. On top of that, I thought the blurb on the back of the book was slightly misleading but this ultimately didn't change my enjoyment of the story.

I'm not sure how much work was done on the stories before they were compiled into this novel, but it is obvious to me that there are four individual stories here rather than a single, flowing tale. It's not that this is a problem for the most part, because the pace and focus of most of these is fairly constant. There is one story though, from the point of view of one of the colonists in particular, that simply seems a bit disconnected with the rest of the book.

There are problems with focusing on the people rather than the other aspects. If the story has a science fiction backdrop, attention to detail is a must, even if the science is not heavy going. It is evident that the author has not really properly thought through some of the more advanced details of setting up a colony so far from home/help. Likewise, in colonizing a moon orbiting a gas giant, gravitational forces are going to lay a major part in both planning and day-to-day life, but these are never mentioned.

On the subject of planning, precious little seems to have been done. Upon arriving at Coyote, the author tries to get the people onto the moon as quickly as possible. Little reconnaissance is done and the colony is built on the first semi-decent looking spot that the scouting party picks out. As a book that deals primarily with the people, you'd expect the characterisation to be good, and it is. It's the lack of attention to detail that lets this book down, in my opinion, especially in a story that's meant to be believable or based in reality.

This doesn't ruin the book, though. If you don't care about the science or the attention to detail and prefer to read about the people colonizing another planet, then chances are that you'll find this to be a good read. I tried to overlook the errors and was successful for the main part and I ended up enjoying the story, apart from that disjointed segment I mentioned above, but the ending was better and leaves the story arc open for further trips to Coyote (which are delivered in Coyote Rising and promised for Coyote Frontier in February 2006).

Amazon price: £5.59
List price: £6.99
ISBN: 1841493678

Summary: Character-driven story regarding the colonisation of another planet.