Download Your Copy Bronze Summer (Northland, #2) Devised By Stephen Baxter Supplied As Paperback

characters are still pretty weak, and I had a hard time keeping track of what if anything distinguished them from each other.
The first half of the book was a slog, with the second half being marginally better when it came to the Trojan conquest of Northland.
Baxter has a penchant for writing about piss, shit, and rape, and it becomes tiresome, I won't be reading the next volume, interesting alt history with bronze age civilization, including contact with North America and water works engineering, Ultimately very rapey, like as bad as George RR Martin, Will appeal to fans of GoT, I love the imaginings of prehistory where the people have all the same thoughts and drivers that people today have.
What an absolute chore this is turning out to be! There are good passages and exciting bits where I can read pages at a time but other sections which rely on shock value and coarse vulgarity that is frankly unnecessary, especially when you have read it umpteen times already.
There is still much to recommend it but whether or not I can bring myself to try the third, remains to be seen.
. . UPDATE: Finished, phew and no, will not be borrowing the third, . . It is an okay read, Characters somewhat two dimensional. I read this after reading Iron Winter and I don't think I'll search out the first book of the series.
RAPE, BIG WALLS amp LEMON CAKE
Stephen Baxter writes like the stereotypical engineer, His vocabulary is mostly limited to technical language, he only uses the most obvious or clichéd of expressions and the characters are so two dimensional they feel like they a written by aYO boy with an emotional IQ in the single digits.


There are so many problems with this book, it's hard to find something nice to say, but after much thought I can let Good Readers know that this book has a really pretty cover.
It also provides a good overview of the many factors that lead to the so called "Late Bronze Age Collapse", although at overpages long, one can find exactly the same list of factors in under three paragraphs on Wikipedia where Baxter obviously did most of his primary research.
Ahhh the internet. Such a wonderful tool for the budding Historical Fiction writer! Maybe that's why Baxter has to provide us with such pompous Afterwards mentioning all the books he hasn't read.


Bronze Summer is an odd mashup of Historical Fiction, Speculative Fiction and Fantasy, The Best bits are the Historical fiction, The plot and characters are designed from the top down to present a slide show of all the current theories about why those cultures fell.
We've got volcanoes, and a scene that shows how societies were too top heavy, and another conversation which demonstrates that stone and iron tools are being used as well.
There are lots of people in this book but no characters, they are all ciphers designed to voice the history lesson.
more on Characters later.

Then we've got Baxter's Speculative Alternative Fantasy stuff, This is less well reasoned because Baxter thought of it, Flick through some of the other Good Reads s, . . you'll see most people don't buy most of these leaps of fancy, Those potatoes worked out to be a real life saver for the Irish didn't they,

I'll buy "THE WALL" from a semiotic point of view, . . although George Martin, Hadrian, and the Chinese got there first, What is it about the obsession we have with BIG WALLS, I would have thought we'd be a bit more reserved in a post Berlin wall age not to mention the current Palestinian mess.
Maybe the West is trying to make up for an inferiority complex through these books, Poor Hadrian really only managed a cattle fence and you can supposedly see the Chinese one from space, or at least find it on google earth.


And now to rape, and a little more rape, And some boy rape. and a dry rape.

G. R. R Martin has coped a lot of flack for the rape in his books, but George knows how to DO rape Sorry George RR you seriously asked for that!.
Baxter thinks rape, and shit provide the realism that the top down structure of his book lacks, He has used his role playing skills to work rape into the background story of his leading fighter and lovable rapist Troy Boy.
He may have taken it up the arse, but he has a winning smile, and can still rape with the best of those Greeks and do a backflip.


GRRM uses the fear of rape and it's consequences to explore power and what it does to the victims and the wielder.
Baxter describes the physical actions of a rape He stuck it in her mouth, her anus, her cunt, This does the same thing as the rapist, It turns the body's of his characters into objects of porn, He thinks he's showing us that Late Bronze Age was a nasty place especially for woman, He succeeds in raising this book from turgid drivel to nasty torture porn,

Martin at least has the good taste to serve lemon cake after rogering,
The second book in the Northland trilogy, Stephen Baxter faster forwards the reader toBC, where he continues the trials and travails of the Northland communities and how they have meshed with the rest of a parallel Bronze Age Earth.


The book focuses around the ancient culture and power base the Northland has become, and the Hatti Empire at it's height.
As with all of the Northland books, the story is set against the backdrop of a natural, world spanning disaster which, in this case, is the massive eruption of an Iceland Volcano.


The resulting calamity spells seasonal shifts for the northern hemisphere over the next few years, producing droughts and famine across half of the globe.
The resulting hardships produce a bandit army of the remnants of several societies caught in these hard times, which ultimately threaten Northland and the civilized world.


Stephen Baxter does a good job of bringing together historical fact and historical fiction couched in the age old question, "what if".
While there are many holes you can poke in the accuracy of Bronze Summer, both from a socioeconomic point of view as well as a technical one, it is just plausible enough to suspend disbelief at least for me and do that thing that all good books should do.
. . make the reader think of it after the initial reading,

Looking forward to the next one,
There was too much graphic sexual violence in this book for me to enjoy the plot,

The characters were slightly one dimensional, so there wasn't much detraction from the violence,
This wasn't what I had anticipated, in contrast to other fictional novels that contain excessive graphic violence,
However, in all

fairness it is set during an intense period of strife and war,

I am looking forward to finishing the Northland Trilogy,

I read this quite soon after reading 'The Long Earth' and was expecting something with a little more brightness and humour distributed through it.


Unfortunately, although parts were very wellwritten, I found this depressing, dark and uninspiring, I suspect it would have helped to have read the first book in the series, but I'm not sure,

I found it hard to actually like any of the characters, and therefore was not as invested in the story as I'd have liked to have been.
Author Stephen Baxter has a thesis to argue: Climate change has been a driver of historical events since ancient times.
We tend to leave this our when we study history, We tell the stories of what kings conquered what countries, considering their motivations of pride, greed, revenge, but rarely considering that a change in the growing season may have diminished food production, and made populations unstable.


In this book there has been a worldwide drought for several years, causing starvation and the fall of empires.
Then a volcanic eruption causes two to three years of freezing cold summers, further stressing the fragile world order, Masses of people with nothing to lose are willing to migrate to a new land, and to fight,

Stephen Baxter has another thesis to argue: Farming sucks, I amon board with the first thesis, but conflicted about the second one, Historically there is truth to what he says, Skeletons of people who lived after the birth of agriculture are shorter in stature, and marked by more diseases than people of huntergatherer societies.


That is exactly how Baxter depicts farmers in this book: they are short, exhausted, and sick, Covered with dust, they plod away at their tasks with demoralized eyes, The societies supported by agriculture are warlike, oppressive, dependent on slavery, and ruled by rich elites,

By contrast, the people of Northland, despite having literacy and an organized culture that supports public works such as the maintainence of the wall, and the digging of canals, live by hunting, fishing, and foraging.
They live in small communities, not large cities, and are depicted as tall and healthy,

Well, good for them, But was farming really so awful Maybe a steady diet of barley porridge was unhealthy, but milk, peas, carrots, and apples are wonderfully healthy foods.
I wonder at Baxters apparent hostility toward farming, considering that the genius of this series of books is imagining how things might be if history had happened differently.
How might it be if the people who lived in Northland reallife Doggerland had protected themselves from rising sea levels by building a wall How might it be if trade between Europe and the Americas had begun early enough to allow the American peoples to develop immunity to smallpox and other diseases, and for potatoes and maize to reach Europe earlier So why not ask: How might it be if agriculture had developed without an accompanying culture of oppression and disease It could have happened.


But the story of Bronze Summer is what it is, And the story is that the people of Northland have continued building their great Wall, adding to it for generations until it stretches from what is today England to what is today France.
The wall is hugely thick, with stairs up and down it, and a walkway on top, and hidden rooms right inside the wall.
Windmills keep the water pumped out, Roads and canals are maintained by volunteer work groups, as a tradition,

The Annid of Annids, the head of Northland society, has just been killed, Her bronze armor was pierced by an iron arrow, Iron is harder than bronze, but the people of Northland dont know how to make it, Only the Hatti people of Anatolia in real life the Hittites know how to make it, The dead Annids daughter Milaqa and is that supposed to be pronounced as if it is Milaka, or Milaqua What am I supposed to make of the Q without the U doesnt know what career to choose.
It is recommended that she study languages, become an interpreter, and travel the world to find out who killed her mother.


Meanwhile the Hatti empire has had a coup, and the Hatti empress Kilushepa has been taken into slavery.
Troy has also fallen. When we read the Iliad, we imagine that Troy was completely obliterated, and thats that, But the city remains, although burnt out and full of rubble, with a handful of hardscrabble ruffians making a living in a Mad Max kind of dystopia.
One of these is Qirim again with the solo Q, He buys Kilushepa, who announces to Qirim that she is a queen, She becomes Qirims lover, and begins plotting to get her kingdom back, with his help,

And everyone ends up in Northland, and they put an expedition together to travel back to the Hatti capital of Hattusa.
Everyone is going to get something they want, The Northlanders are going to learn the secret of making Hatti iron, This is going to allow them to protect themselves against the hordes of starving continentals they believe are coming to invade Northland.


The Hattis are going to get access to seed potatoes to support their starving populations, They have been buying potato mash from the Northlanders, which the Northlanders dont grow themselves, but buy from the Americas.
The Northlanders have been willing to sell the foodstuffs, but have not wanted to give away the seeds before now, because then they would lose their edge in trade.
This seemed to me unNorthlanderlike, with their emphasis on a free and fair society, but it forwards the plot,

Kilushepa will get her throne back, and Qirim assumes he will get power at her side, Of course there are complications, and betrayals, and in the end, war, There are numerous acts of brutality that are described in more detail than I thought necessary, Or perhaps were not necessary at all, I understand that Baxter wants to show us that traumatic experiences warp a person's psyche, and that societal breakdown enables cruel men to practice their cruelty freely.
But how hard did he have to work to convince us of that A few wellplaced details would have done it.


Things are complicated, As an example, here are the names of some of the people who play roles in the story: Milaqa, Kuma, Teel, Qirim, Praxo, Hadhe, Kilushepa, Voro, Medoc, Tibo, Deri, Nago, Caxa, Xivu, Riban, Noli, Bren, Raka, Vala, Mi, Liff, Kurunta, the Spider, Hunda, Muwa, Zidanza, Urhi, Erishum.
It really isnt that hard to follow, but yes, its a lot of characters,

If you want an action story with some twists and turns, you got that, and if you want a novel that gives you something to think about, you got that, too.
With a warning about the acts of brutality, There are some uncanny resemblances between this and another series I have recently read the latest book in, George RR Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire' the exiled queen returning to reclaim her throne, the epochal battle at the Wall.
. . which leads me to feel the must be some degree of influence occurring! But no matter, . . Martin and Baxter are both great writers, and if the ideas of one inspire the other, then they are both talented enough to do great and original things with said ideas as demonstrated here!
having since started therd Northland book, Iron Winter, my theory of influence is further evidenced I give you the strap line on the inner sleeve: "The ice is coming" familiar with the Stark words The wall that Ana's people built has long outlasted her and history has been changed.
The British Isles are still one with the European mainland and Doggerland has become a vibrant and rich land which has drawn the attention of the Greeks.
An invasion is mounted and soon Greek Biremes are grinding ashore to change the world forever, .