This is a pretty short review, because I invoked the Nancy Pearl rule: if you aren’t enjoying the book 50 pages in, put it down and read something else. I actually read to page 142 before I decided to put this book down last night. It was just too much of a chore to read, though it has some promise.
The story: humans have colonized a few other planets. One planet found rotates around it’s axis so slowly that day and night last hundreds of years. The meridian between the day side and the night side only moves a few miles every turn around the sun. Two alien races (the only alien races found in the galaxy so far) evolved there. The night side demons
controlled the day side aliens. Our protagonist is Simon Mayaram who works for the consul’s office. He came to the planet because he was interested in the demons. But by the time he got there (it takes dozens of years to travel from planet to planet) the demons had been obliterated (mostly) by the human colonists working with the day-siders. The day-siders use surgery and drugs to become as nearly human as possible. Only some of them are now agitating to overthrow the human rulers. A group of such terrorists attack during a party and take Simon and one of the day-siders hostage after killing everyone else.
A lot of the book is told through the perceptions of the aliens. Along with a strange human back-story/history that’s told piecemeal, I found it very hard to get into and understand what was going on and who the players all were. In addition, their motivations and shifting alliances got confusing. I put the book down last night when I realized I just didn’t care about any of the characters and that hindered my caring about the story.
Rather than being a bad or poorly written book, I get the distinct impression that this one is more an issue of it just not appealing to me.
Title: Celestis
Author: Paul Park
Imprint / publisher: Tor
Format: Hardcover
Length: 287 p.
Publication date: June 1995
ISBN-10: 0-312-85899-X
Subject: Space colonies — Fiction
LC classification: PS3566.A6745 C6 1995
