Rolling Thunder

A couple years back, my friends at First Friday Fandom recommended John Varley's RED THUNDER as an entertaining read. I picked it up from the library and greatly enjoyed it. In short, it is the story of some enterprising young people and their mission to Mars.

Since the book had been out for a couple years, a sequel was on the shelves already. RED LIGHTNING was a weaker follow-up following the son of REDTHUNDER's hero. In a nice twist, Varley looked at the downside of the technology he created in the first book and how it may affect governments and society. However, the book was more disjointed and rambly than the first - perhaps because there was a solid narrative thread in RED THUNDER. RED LIGHTNING jumps between separate Mars, Earth and space travel plots and manages to tie them loosely toghether.

Now a third and final sequel, ROLLING THUNDER is out. What caught my eye at first was the adapted U.S. Marine Corps logo now featuring Mars on the globe. (To digress, I gave a copy of RED THUNDER to a former Marine neighbor and he did not like it.) The story stars the daughter of the son of the hero of RED THUNDER. The book examines the fallout from RED LIGHTNING and brings even more disaster upon Earth. For what started as a hopeful futuristic novel, it has become an Irwin Allen storyline. This novel suffers from the same problems as RED LIGHTNING - no solid story hook. Again disaster visits Earth and the consequences of Martian technology continue to affect politics and society. The story plays out to a logical conclusion and manages a few twists on the way. It is a decent book, but not up the standards of that first novel.