Note: In Sweden, The Helliconia Trilogy was published as six books. This is book number four, consisting of roughly the second half of Helliconia Summer.

Again, I'm baffled with the amount of rich details Aldiss has put into his world. I really enjoyed the description of the lifecycle of the assigassi fish here, for example, and the discussions on linguistics.

But the main problem remains - even though this is a broad, polyphonic story, including people from many walks of life facing real problems and being drawn into conflict on small and large scales, I'm just not drawn into the characters and their dilemmas. It stays on the surface for me, which makes the reading feel strangely shallow. Also, after four books I'm beginning to get a little tired of Aldiss awe of science and hard fact. Everybody who's a scientist in these books is invariably extremely tiresome and full of him/herself, with virtually no sense of timing. The "truth about phagores" speech at the end of this book, when the Borelian ex-chansellor rips the complete fundament out from under the feet of his listeners and then is shocked and apalled that he isn't listened to, is juat one striking example.

But what IS thickening is the plot on a macro level, the ebb and flow of human/phagore dominance on the planet during Helliconia's big year. I expect a rising in the last volumes, and I'm looking forward to following an empire's fall. ( )