For those who have read the first three
books in Ken Macleod’s Fall Revolution
series, The Sky Road will be a
sublimely satisfying last bow. None of
the books connected linearly in a strong sense of the expression (in other
words, it’s not necessary to read them in order but it goes a long way toward
manifesting the overall vision), The Sky
Road offers yet another perspective on the future of humanity through the
splintered lens of politics and technology.
The novel is a delicately pointed end to the series, and while certainly
the most subdued, may be the best of the four.
Like The Stone Canal, The Sky Road is
divided into two stories told in alternating chapters. The first focuses on a young man named Colvis
colha Gree and is set at a time centuries in the future when the world has
re-built itself to a pleasantly bucolic/industrial state many years after a
major civilization-destroying apocalypse.
Though a history major at the local university, Colvis is working his
summer vacation as a welder on a crew building the first rocket the world has
seen in ages. Technology beyond mechanical considered “black knowledge”, the
rocket represents mankind’s first excursion back into space since the Deliverer
saved humanity. Meeting a young woman
while drinking at the town market one day, Colvis suddenly finds his studies
and work have a connection.
