Rolling Thunder

I was looking forward to reading this title after having enjoyed the previous two titles in the series so much. Unfortunately I was somewhat disapointed with the whole book. I found it difficult to get into the viewpoint of a young woman telling the story and basically whining and complaining through the first half. The book undulates, rather than rolls and there is very little thunder. Maybe in the crash scene but that is about it. So many great ideas, from the black spheres, to compressors, even the creatures on the Jovian moon are not fleshed out. There are too many long passages giving mind numbing details about minor aspects of Jovian moons and other solar bodies. The action and adventure that made the first two such a rollicking ride are missing. The new character is far less interesting and even the original ones are played down. Its obvious that there is a fourth book planned but I will probably not be along for the ride.

Varley continues to channel Heinlein, and may well be the best alive in this genre of space adventure. Highly reccomended.

I wont attempt to summarize the book, as there are some excellent reviews that do that well. The book is part of the continuing homage to Heinlein. Red Thunder did up Rocketship Galileo (and some of the Rolling Stones and went it some better. Red Lightning had those elements of The moon is a harsh mistress, with the war against earth. Red Thunder is obviously Podkayne of Mars with an older, more capable girl. If you are paying homage to Heinlein, you are courting the readers who grew up on him, so some of the retro music, etc is not unreasonable. Besides, who can predict what musical taste will be 50 years from now? I thought it was amusing that, once again, in a Varley universe, aliens from Jupiter (or at least one of its moons) kicked humanity off of earth. But this time for reasons unknown. That doesnt bother me because hey, theyre really alien, not humanoids with all to similar habits and tastes. As someone pointed out, the black bubble technology is more developed in this book. Good stuff, especially for making an ark. But as wonderful as it is, useless against the aliens... scary thought that. But the personal survival units were a good concept. Im glad our favorite Cajun inventor got to make a comeback. In the first two books, he was interesting, but not really developed. Here he finally meets someone who actually listens to him and discovers there is more than everyone thought. Of course she had to practically die first... but they will have time enough for love. The trial of Podkayne was interesting. I think Heinlein would have approved. And the driving sequence was pretty funny...

This is the third book in Varleys ongoing tribute to Robert Heinleins juveniles. Its not the best (thats the first) and not the worst (thats the second one) but its solid Varley - playful and joking, yet deadly serious.

The Third Generation of the Red Thunder crew is thrown into a battle for Mars. Poor Jubal and the squeezer is still the target of multinational/governmental conglomerate takeover of Mars. Again, the youth of the Red Thunder clan are forced into a batle nobody wnats. But with the help of Uncle Travis, they are going to kick butts and take names again! And Jubal finds something he never expected to find in his lifetime...

Varley is perhaps not at his strongest here, given his virtuosity in the Titan series, but he nevertheless provides an entertaining space romp with some unusual and truly engaging characters. There are enough plot kinks to keep you interested in our heroines fate (with the unlikely name of Podkayne), and the end run heads us off to a feel-good launch ramp for the next novel (surely theres another in the writing as we speak....) After a long hiatus between this and his Titan series, Im delighted to see Mr. Varley is back in the saddle. I give it 4 stars for decent characterization, continued use of ingenious gadgetry developed in a prior novel, a reasonably complex plot, and for not taking itself too seriously. All in all, a worthy, happy read.

Kinda slow through much of the book with character development - then non-stop action. Stick with it for a good read.

I hadnt gotten more than a couple chapters into this novel published in 2008 when I realized that the 17th of November, 2009, must have hit John Varley like a boot in the gonads. He was REALLY suckered by the man-made global warming fraud. From start to finish, ROLLING THUNDER is a glimpse into the way an ex-hippie and failed college physics major who has schemed deliberately to assume the mantle of Robert Heinlein and build himself a reputation as a hard SF writer can fail to understand how scientific method works, and thus gets gulled, cullied, and thoroughly diddled by the climatology caliphate peddling the preposterous bullpuckey that increases in Earths atmospheric carbon dioxide content caused by human beings burning stuff could cause enough tropospheric heat trapping (by way of the greenhouse effect) to jack up the global temperature in any significant way. Im inclined to give the fundamentally stupid author a pass if he can give me a good story and decent characters, but Varley NEVER gives this garbage a rest, even finishing up the last chapter with the classic brain-dead IPCC-bamboozled idiot Repent! Repent! message about deadly-awful-horrible-nasty global warming. ROLLING THUNDER is readable as fiction, with a fair goshwowboyoboy factor (as Varley has shown from early days he knows how to do), but in succumbing to the mundane stupidity of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hoax, he demonstrates that even a talented journeyman speculative fiction writer can get himself led down a blind alley and whacked upside the head. Ive gotta wonder what John Varleys reaction was when he downloaded that FOIA2009.zip archive from the Net for himself and confronted confirmation that those of us on skeptical side have been calling this ginormous fraud correctly for the past thirty years. Anybody know how hes been responding at any SF conventions hes attended since the next-to-last month of 2009? I havent been able to Google up anything about him on this subject online.

As a longtime fan of Johns work I grabbed this book and consumed it voraciously. Having read the other books in his Mars trilogy (Red Thunder, Red Lightning) I had thought them as a separate thought or arc from his Nine planets stories but no, these books are defiantly at the heart of those earlier works. Now if he could find a way to tie in his Gaia trilogy.......

Takes a while but you fall in love with Podkayne (thanks RAH!). Varley has done it again! Looking forward to his next.