Taylor Anderson

I tried this book with some scepticism. There seem to be so many sf novels out there in which Americans, either military or at least armed, boldly go where no man has gone before, and shoot the baddies. To an American, this may seem a very natural kind of book to write or read; but I'm not an American, and it starts to feel a bit samey.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story well enough; it's competently written and at least different in detail from all the other vaguely similar ones. The situation and the personality of the ship's captain reminded me vaguely of [b:The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream|1258132|The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream|G.C. Edmondson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328310249s/1258132.jpg|1246947], but the details are certainly different.

This is not a time-travel story but an alternative-world story, and rather unusually it's to an alternative world that split from ours a very long time ago, so that evolution has populated the world with a somewhat different set of species. I rather like the lemur-descended creatures who make friends with the marooned humans in their battered old destroyer; although they're not an imaginative fictional creation. They're physically rather short and equipped with fur and tails, but their mentality seems human.

The baddies here are the all-devouring merciless lizards, who again seem mentally human, though single-mindedly evil. I suppose it simplifies a story to have baddies that are just bad through and through, but it's unsubtle. In principle I prefer baddies who seem more like normal people.… (more)