Book four! Whoohoo!

Book 4, which is Titan by John Varley, came about because, as I put it to my husband, "I've read all my Christmas books." This earned me a moment of disbelief, then an exasperated roll of the eyes, and then Titan and its sequels appeared on my bedside table.

These were books Graig purchased used, recommended by someone, but put aside by him as not really liking them too much, there was too much fantasy, not enough sci-fi for him, so he thought I might like them, seeing as how I like fantasy literature.

True enough, but upon reaching the end of it I smiled and said, "yeah, not bad, but there's too much sci-fi and not enough fantasy in it".

The gist of Titan is simple, group of astronauts are on mission to Saturn, discover something strange near one of Saturn's moons, are taken 'prisoner' on strange celestial object, discover it is an entire organic world/alien, make friends, have adventures and talk to 'god', or rather, the entity known as Gaea, the alien world itself.

The main character of this book is the Earth ship's captain, the oddly named Cirroco Jones. She's not a bad character, strong-willed, smart, not gorgeous, not infallible, she kind of puts in mind of the Ripley mold of space heroines. Jones and her crew all go through a lot upon their arrival on Gaea, some come through it ok, some not, and one completely looses her humanity.

The greatest discovery Jones and her crew makes though is of a race of natives called Titanides. They are pretty much like centaurs of Greek mythology, human heads and torsos attached to the torso and hindquarters of a horse. They are a friendly, complex people whose speech is all done in song, which is something Cirroco instinctively (she's not sure how) understands.

Cirroco and her remaining crew members settle in with the Titanides for awhile, but eventually, they are restless, not necessarily wanting to leave Gaea, but to get some questions answered, so, in undoubtedly what is the most fantasy like trope in this book, she and two companions go on a quest, a quest to come face to face with Gaea herself. This quest involves the extremely difficult journey up one of Gaea's support cables (think of a cable on a suspension bridge, except it would reach outerspace, and not just the top of the Golden Gate Bridge) to Gaea's central hub, basically on the roof of the world. Along they way are many trials and tribulations, suitable for an epic journey. In fact, once Cirroco and her remaining companion Gaby reach Gaea, Gaea is sufficiently impressed by Cirroco as to give her a job as Wizard to the world, basically Gaea's emissary amongst the people. Cirroco agrees (cue sequel).

Overall, its a pretty good book. Enough mystery and character development, but as I said, there is a little too much sci-fi in it for my liking. The descriptions of the ship and the structure of Gaea herself leave me a little uncertain, and after too much of the techo-babble, I start to tune it out.

There is a lot of frank talk about sex in this book. Not so much descriptive sex scenes or anything like that, but all the characters are comfortable with it, have it and think about it. Homosexuality is not presented as much of a taboo at all, and it is nice to read that Varley obviously thinks that society will be much more open minded in the future. However, there is also a double rape in the book, and that's the sort of (non)sexuality I can always do without.

So yeah, I did enjoy this enough to move onto the next book in the series, Wizard. Titan is nothing spectacular, but its a good quick read with enough going on to keep me interested.