Dark Lightning

June 23, 2014
On Rolling Thunder, a starship the size of a small mountain, twins Cassie and Polly live the mundane lives of utterly stereotypical teen girls from the 1950s: they’re athletic, cute, bright, and obsessed with romance, and they refrain from alienating boys with unseemly displays of intelligence or competence. When inarticulate genius Jubal declares that the ship must stop or be destroyed by a newly discovered cosmic speed limit, his pronouncement triggers a crisis of confidence in Rolling Thunder’s genteelly autocratic government. Mutineers ambush the adults, and the girls must stymie the insurrectionists before the ship is destroyed. This labored, second-rate pastiche of Robert Heinlein’s YA fiction is archaic in sensibility and full of lengthy narrative-halting info-dumps that offer no hint of the brilliance Varley once displayed.

July 1, 2014

The spaceship Rolling Thunder is still heading for New Sol, traversing the vast emptiness of space. But as the Broussard family awakens inventor Jubal from suspended animation, he warns them that space is not as empty as they thought and that the hollowed-out asteroid they all travel aboard is in grave danger. Dark lightning, a kind of dark matter, is bombarding the asteroid, and Jubal's original mind is their only hope of figuring out how to deal with it. But others in the Rolling Thunder community feel that the Broussards have too much power and keep too many secrets. VERDICT Told mostly from the point of view of Jubal's two 18-year-old daughters, this is another fun hard(ish) sf adventure from Varley (Rolling Thunder; Titan). The story meanders a little until the pace picks up in the second half as the unrest on board leads to outright mutiny. Choosing teenagers as the primary narrators gives this a more lighthearted tone than some volumes in this series.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014
With this gripping deep-space adventure, Varley wraps up his Thunder and Lightning series, which began with Red Thunder in 2003 and continued through two sequels. Like the earlier installments, this one feels like the author is channeling the literary spirit of Robert A. Heinlein (especially his classic The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, 1966). The starship Rolling Thunder, carved out of an asteroid 20-odd years earlier, is well on its way to its new home, far away from Earth, when Jubal Broussard, the inventor of the ship's unique propulsion system, comes out of suspended animation and promptly announces the ship has to be stopped, or everyone aboard will die. Reaction to his warning is mixed, ranging from acceptance to cautious skepticism to mutinous disbelief, and soon it falls to Jubal's twin daughters, Cassie and Polly, to save the ship and its inhabitants from near-certain calamity. Familiarity with the previous books in the series is helpful but not necessary, as Varley seamlessly weaves enough backstory into the book to give newcomers a solid footing. Great fun.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)