REVIEW: Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
Publishing Information: Paperback; 336 pages
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co.; 22 January 2009
ISBN 10: 0575083573
ISBN 13: 9780575083578
Standalone
Copy: Out of pocket
Reviewer: Tyson

Back of the Book "It is 1946. WWII is over, the Soviet Union has crushed Nazi Germany and now exerts control over a vast swathe of Eastern Europe. However, Stalin is uneasy. He knows that the decadent United States will collapse within a decade and without an enemy to galvanize it, the Soviet Union's pursuit of worldwide Communist revolution may falter. He summons a group of the USSR's leading science fiction writers to a remote dacha and has them create a new foe to energise the Russian people. They concoct a story of radiation-based aliens launching an assault on the Earth by initially destroying an American spacecraft and then launching a devastating radioactive assault on the Ukraine. After several months of work, Stalin has the project terminated and the writers are sent back to their lives, warned never to speak of the project again."

This is my second attempt to read Adam Roberts, my first attempt was with New Model Army, which I felt was less than stellar. In Yellow Blue Tibia Adams does a much better job. The book spans forty years of Konstantin Andreiovich Skyorecky's life. From his encounter with Stalin where he is to brainstorm the ultimate Science Fiction story to keep the Soviet people in fear from an outside invaders to his time when Chernobyl meltdown.

The character of Konstantin is an interesting one as his sense of humor helps to propel Yellow Blue Tibia beyond the mundane and adds a distinct feel of Russian humor to the novel. The one scene in particular that demonstrates this is his time being interrogated by the KGB. I felt that it sums up the character rather well and does an excellent job of humanizing the secretive agency while injecting some humor. All of the supporting characters are also written fairly well and do a good job of projecting their personalities in the story.

Yellow Blue Tibia supposedly takes place in our history, but Roberts ends the novel in a fairly strange way which makes you wonder if the book really takes place in our time line or in an alternate reality. I know that as I finished the book, I was uncertain of just where or when things took place. It made for a more entertaining read that I enjoyed all the more for it.

While Yellow Blue Tibia was by far a better book than his New Model Army, I still am on the fence as to whether I actually like Roberts as an author. There are some funny situations and dialogue in the book but the book also loses focus and makes for a confusing read here and there which turned me off as we neared the second act of the book. If Roberts has another book that sounds interesting, I may pick it up otherwise I doubt I will go out of my way to pick up another of his novels. It should also be noted that Yellow Blue Tibia was nominated in 2010 for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Plot 9
Characters 7
Style 7

Overall 7/10

REVIEW: New Model Army by Adam Roberts

New Model Army by Adam Roberts
Publishing information: Paperback; 288 pages
Publisher: Orion Publishing 15 April 2010
ISBN 10: 0575083611
ISBN 13: 9780575083615
Standalone
Copy: Out of pocket
Reviewer: Tyson


Back of the Book: "Adam Roberts' new novel is a terrifying vision of a near future war - a civil war that tears the UK apart as new technologies allow the worlds first truly democratic army to take on the British army and wrest control from the powers that be. Taking advances in modern communication and the new eagerness for power from the bottom upwards Adam Roberts has produced a novel that is at once an exciting war novel and a philosophical examination of war and democracy. It shows one of the UKs most exciting and innovative literary voices working at the height of his powers and investing SF with literary significance that is its due."


New Model Army is told from the prospective of one man, Tony, he holds no rank in the NMA but his voice is just as important as every one else in the unit.  The Unit, Pantegral, is composed of free men and women that during the heat of battle offer varying opinions on military tactics and maneuvers via a online chat system. Once a tactic with merit has been brought to everyone's attention the entire NMA then votes on whether or not to do the proposed action. our protagonist, Tony, makes it a point to always vote in the NMA's decision and voting process. 


Tony's NMA, named Pantegral, relies on WiFi for their communication and Google maps for their intelligence and surveillance. The book takes place roughly 20 years in the future and Google updates their maps every thirty minutes. I thought this was an ingenious method of military intelligence as it cuts down on costs but the issue that I had with the concept was that the government (in this case Britain) would just shut down the New Model Armies access to the site. This would virtually make the New Model Army reliant on human intelligence (humint) which would disable the whole idea of the New Model Army in that they would not be able to vote on every action Pantegral would propose/take.


Tony states that each person in the New Model Army is given a budget to get their own supplies and equipment. Those that choose to overspend their budget would be penalized and those that underspend would suffer for it in the field. I do not disagree with ideas behind underspending on a soldier's kit but, if a soldier goes over their budget not much is said.  I would have like to have found out what the majority of the soldiers chose for their kits as we only hear about Tony and his AK-47. I would think that the majority of soldiers in the unit would chose the same weapons as they may need to borrow munitions from a fellow trooper. Also, every soldier must don many hats, they have to learn many different skills- logistics, intelligence, leadership, medicine, and trauma.  While it is possible, I found it impossible to suspend disbelief. Tony's background is that he comes from the regular British Army and after training he became disillusioned with the chain of command and went AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and joined the New Model Army. Even if this was the case, I highly doubt that he was properly trained to have learned these skills adequately.


In the New Model Army, Adam Roberts touches on the concept of loving the man you share your foxhole with. It is a topic that has been written about countless times and will be written about many times in the future. Men in highly stressful situations come to rely and gain a close pact with his unit and certain individuals. However, Roberts goes a step beyond that and in New Model Army we learn late in the book that Tony is a homosexual. This is not news breaking in anyway, but the way that Roberts uses Tony seemed to me as if he was doing in more for shock value than to progress the story. While retreating from the British army, Tony visits an old lover who he learns has been married and his partner takes an immediate dislike to Tony as he is against the war.  Instead of having a discussion on the pros and cons of the conflict and the New Model Army and their conflict with the British government, Roberts decides to have a short love scene between Tony and his ex-lover. This causes a rift between Tony, his ex, and the ex's partner and allows Tony to get back into the conflict with the British, I felt it was again thrown into the novel more for shock value and less to progress the story.


In the end, I was disappointed with New Model Army not because of the concepts or the events in the book that I felt were included to shock the reader, but only because as I read the book I found myself constantly looking for flaws in the idea of an army that constantly votes on their mission parameters. If the British had disabled the communication network of the New Model Army, then their ability to fight would have been significantly hindered and more than likely defeated. For a novel set in the future, the ability to block or jam communication should have been highly likely and plausible.  Roberts does bring up the issue of hackers in the book and how it was impossible to hack the NMAs network he never brought up the idea of simply pulling the plug on them instead. A localized EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) would have simplified things for the British Army greatly. I have Blue Yellow Tibia Adam Robert's previous novel in my pile to read and I am curious to see the difference in the two books.  For me Roberts shows a lot of talent with the novel and I think that the ideas behind New Model Army were great but, just failed to deliver for me. 


Plot  7
Characters  6
Style  8


Overall  6.5