High (SF) - Adam Roberts ****

Reading this novella was a strange experience. It was more like watching an episode of an SF anthology TV series such as The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror than reading a book. Like these, there is limited character development and a restricted plot with interesting ideas, but not a full story arc. It did made me wish Adam Roberts had fleshed it out to a full novel - I could see so many more opportunities that were unfulfilled - but like the better episodes in the TV shows, as long as you take it for what it is, it's still a fun experience.

The central character Hi (a name with echoes of Snow Crash's Hiro Protagonist) is a very talented future mercenary. Taking on the job of liberating an extremely rich woman's daughter from the girl's father's fortified home on Mars, Hi achieves the impossible in getting to Mars without being discovered and killed (Roberts toys with us as to how this could have happened), and then sets about preparing for a ridiculously David and Goliath rescue.

There's a big twist part way through, and another near the end, which might feel a little close to deus ex machina, but in practice it works reasonably. As mentioned, the characters are limited, not so much two dimensional as shells - we can see some detail, but there's a lot that needs filling in. There's a fair amount of action, though, and some nice touches on Martian life and society.

This is, in the end, a quick and dirty book for one of the UK's best and more literary SF authors, but a bargain on Kindle.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

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