“It was all marvellous – but somehow fantastically dull at the same time.” Epic, yes, but strangely low-key particularly for a novel in which the dastardly Chinese hurl an asteroid at the Earth. Humanity, bless it, colonises the third planet of the star Proxima in a distinctly ignoble way and those who survive the inevitable push and shove find the planet to be more of a Siberian gulag than a paradise. Mysterious tech powers the trip and the narrative keeps us up to speed with the political argy-bargy going on back home; it turns out there may be more of that tech where it came from and the aforementioned Chinese aren’t happy about being kept out of the loop. I mean *really* not happy. Throw in banned artificial intelligences, changes to the timeline, aliens made of twigs and a mysterious hatch behind which lies something that the novel never pretends isn’t almost immediately guessable and you’d be forgiven for expecting an all-out roller-coaster ride. But this is a deliberately paced, unshowy, novel, well-crafted and steering clear of narrative fireworks and gosh-wow moments. The attention wanders when the 7-Zark-7-esque Colonisation Unit starts delivering lectures on its ecological observations and the lack of sympathetic characters really causes problems at times - poor old Yuri gets lumbered with a partner whose endless snark and absence of any affection for him would have got her fed to the alien twig men if I’d been around. Plus a fair amount of the narrative is standard alien planet colonisation stuff we’ve seen many times elsewhere; namely, survive and make babies. One comes away from “Promixa” feeling the author seems to have had a bit more fun setting up this sandbox than we’ve had playing in it. The narrative is, whisper it, a bit by the numbers. Having said that, there’s a definite air of dependability to Baxter’s writing and since I’m often in the mood for a hefty wodge of well-crafted, hard-ish sci-fi with plenty of ideas rolling around in it I’d be up for more, particularly after the enjoyably “wtf” cliffhanger Baxter ends on here.
