The moral of the tale is that nothing is ever quite what it seems, or even that which we may wish it to be. It becomes apparent that the setting is Earth, and that the Burn Line of the title is the evidence in the archaeological record of the era in which humanity destroyed itself. The revelation that humanity’s AIs meddled with and destroyed Bear society is destabilising for both the species now inhabiting the planet.

With its talk of notaries and supplicants, it felt almost Dickensian, a point compounded by the fact that our hero Pilgrim Saltmire is a secretary to Master Able, recently deceased, but also a scholar and a curator of books. After being refused by the wealthy and advanced Union capital city Sweetwater "collective", a new type of clan that has been powering the people's economic expansion through new technology obtained from studying the long-gone "Ogre" cities of yore, he goes back to his rural and not that wealthy clan to ask his mother, Thorn, one of the "aunties" who lead the clan, for said support. But in August 1970 the weather for the first week of our holiday was wet and windy, and my sister, my brother and I mostly stayed indoors. However, the story moved slowly, and I found myself losing track of the characters, since none of them really had strong individual personalities (with the possible exception of Raia). McAuley's fabulous far future, impacted by the consequences of global warming, colonisation and historical injustices, explores and reflects our own challenges while telling a fast paced story of discovery and adventure.

In the present, Hanna, a marine biologist trying to find ways to save the reef from climate change while coming to terms with the break-up of a relationship, becomes involved in the mystery of Coral Man, whose white-painted body is found adrift in an inflatable painted with a message: This is what it looks like when coral dies. what if human reproduction resembled that of insects, with larval forms hatching from eggs, and changing, via pupae, into the adult form?

Overall, I lovedThe Burn Line a lot and found its twisting and turning, from Pilgrim's almost picaresque set of adventures to the second part, very captivating, and while I thought the resolution of the main mysteries to be a bit rushed, it was still adequate and I definitely loved the last page. The field of view is tiny, about the size of a grain of dust held at arms length, but it's packed with galaxies shining with light 4. Paul’s latest is another book (there’s been a few lately) that begins and makes the reader think they’re reading one type of novel before veering off into a very different story. There are two arcs to the story, and both of them feel like they just sort of end unceremoniously once they hit their climactic moments.

With that setting, I assumed that the book was set perhaps several hundred million years in the future, given the amount of time that it would take to evolve human intelligence. Pilgrim’s world and everything he thought he knew about his people’s history will be utterly changed. The first half feels like a rather meandering prelude that can probably be summed up in one sentence. Consequently the action—shaped by Ysbel showing the same attribute of stubbornness as Pilgrim—shows her to be as much a stalking horse as an independent actor.

Our recorded history – the history that we can kind of piece together with records and structures – goes back maybe 6,000 years ago. Kornbluth's satires of American mid-twentieth century hyperconsumerism, The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law, and there's a truly science-fictional twist to this densely realised ecothriller. The second story takes up the narrative some years later and focuses more on different cultures trying to work together to solve "humanitarian" crises. Imaginative, intelligent world building, with a far-future setting that allows our characters, whilst different, to exhibit endearingly human traits.The two of them form an uneasy odd-couple relationship as for very different reasons they try to track down rumours of surviving populations of the lumpsucker. Like 400 Billion Stars, it featured a species of enigmatic alien, but the story was mostly concerned with the collapse into civil war of a colony that had established only a precarious foothold on an exoplanet orbiting Tau Ceti. Here is a quick description and cover image of book Beyond the Burn Line written by Paul McAuley which was published in September 22nd 2022. Pilgrim's world and everything he thought he knew about his people's history will be utterly changed.