Sunday, September 19, 1999
Title: The Bones Of Time
Author: Kathleen Ann Goonan
Publisher: Harper Collins
Having finally gotten around to reading Goonan's Queen City Jazz, her second novel The Bones Of Time is published to catch me while I'm feeling superior for reading something that I should have read ages ago - that'll teach me. While the second instalment of the story started in QCJ is available in the US along with a third volume in hardback, Bones Of Time is actually unrelated; set in a Hawaii of the next century, against a background of the island's history and the space race, cloning and nano-tech.
Lynn is something of a renegade scientist, turning her back on her family and their involvement in Inter Space. Inter Space have taken over much of the island and use their power to bend the law in their attempts to raise money, covered by the space race. Finding a clone of the ancient Hawaiian king, Lynn acts to save his life, knowing that Inter Space will regard him as a threat and want him dead. This takes her on a journey from Hawaii through Hong Kong, Tibet, Nepal and Thailand - one step ahead of the corporate evil and one step behind the realisation of what is really at stake. This introduces her to the underground - the new Dalai Lama, the blossoming Homeland movement and the clone Akamu's remarkable strengths.
Interspersed between Lynn's chapters are those of Cen, a master mathematician. Obsessed with a tragic princess and pursued intellectually by Inter Space he comes up with some strange ideas. Ideas about the nature of time and space and the possibilities to travel through the meta-universe. Reflecting ideas familiar from the works of Moorcock to Egan, Goonan puts Cen's calculations into place. His work becoming crucial to the struggle against Inter Space and the intentions of the Hawaiians to subvert the space program.
RVWR: PTR
September 1999
