Hotter than Hell - Mark Tushingham
Jul. 23rd, 2006 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handsliveI first heard about this book on BoingBoing. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
purplejavatroll and I couldn't resist going down to Greenwoods and ordering a copy. I wanted to like this book. I wanted to be entertained by an educated insider's take on global climate change and political upheaval.
Sadly, this book is not that entertaining. If I had heard no prior hype, I'd have said this was less a novel about climate change (there's nothing surprising about the weather in this novel if you've been watching the news and reading National Geographic) and more a novel about military adventure and the disintegration of government. And I've read better novels about that.
More importantly, I have suspicions of scientific inconsistency. They've got their troops on water and food rations and local problems with irrigation, but the main character is able to convert his armoured unit to cavalry using local horses? Does he know how much food and water horses consume? (And never mind the whole thing about rescuing nags and turning them into courier mounts.)
The break down of Canadian and US government also seemed weak to me and his notions of military tactics are not well enough developed to carry a book that is, frankly, mostly about the military tactics.
So, this year this is the book I will not finish, I guess.
purplejavatroll and I couldn't resist going down to Greenwoods and ordering a copy. I wanted to like this book. I wanted to be entertained by an educated insider's take on global climate change and political upheaval.Sadly, this book is not that entertaining. If I had heard no prior hype, I'd have said this was less a novel about climate change (there's nothing surprising about the weather in this novel if you've been watching the news and reading National Geographic) and more a novel about military adventure and the disintegration of government. And I've read better novels about that.
More importantly, I have suspicions of scientific inconsistency. They've got their troops on water and food rations and local problems with irrigation, but the main character is able to convert his armoured unit to cavalry using local horses? Does he know how much food and water horses consume? (And never mind the whole thing about rescuing nags and turning them into courier mounts.)
The break down of Canadian and US government also seemed weak to me and his notions of military tactics are not well enough developed to carry a book that is, frankly, mostly about the military tactics.
So, this year this is the book I will not finish, I guess.
