Helix

by Eric Brown

Solaris, 480 pp, $7.95

Helix is a novel by the prolific author of Crazy Love. And, apparently, the author of An Alien Ate Me for Breakfast also due out this year

Five hundred years after launch, the colony ship, Lovelock, is hit with a series of explosions forcing a landing on the nearest possible location, the polar section of the Helix, a vast spiral construct of worlds. With most of the colonists in cold sleep, the surviving crewmembers must proceed up-spiral in search of a habitable section. On the way, they encounter strange races, and landscapes, meet with assistance and conflict and attempt to solve the riddle of the Helix, and survival.

This is a literate book, but don’t confuse that with boring, there is character development, plotting and action in a full and richly developed series of worlds within the uber-world of the Helix. There is philosophy, politics and oppressive religion in competition with redemption. I will be surprised if it lacks award nomination, both here and the U.K. At $7.95, last one to the Bookstore in June is a rotten egg. - Pam Allan