Red Lightning

Red Lightning by John Varley
My review
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Once again, John Varley sets out to prove that science fiction doesn’t have to be a jumble of made up nonsense. Instead, he focuses on Ray, the son of Manny and Kelly from Red Thunder, and his friends and family, as they deal with the consequences of the first book. Ray has grown up on Mars, and probably the coolest “sci-fi” parts of the book are when Varley examines what people growing up in 1/3 of Earth’s gravity would be like (taller, for one thing). The book also eerily examines the fallout from a tsunami disaster hitting the East coast of the US. The author’s note says he wrote the tsunami in before the Indonesian disaster (and indeed moved the tsunami to the US after that happened) and before Katrina. He is amazingly accurate in his portrayal of the aftermath, especially given what we know happened after Katrina. This takes up the first half of the book, and is the most powerful part. After our friends return to Mars, it’s on with the sci-fi, and the plot of evil-doers wanting to control Ray’s eccentric Uncle Jubal. Varley does well, for a sequel (and even leaves it open-ended enough for another sequel).
Next up, Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. I chose this sort of as a balance to The God Delusion, but I imagine it will only reinforce what Richard Dawkins writes in that book.