Book Review: 'Pilgrimage' by Drew Mendelson
'Pilgrimage' is one of those DAW Books that I frequently saw on used bookstore shelves back when I began this blog in 2008...........I picked up a copy that year, but I haven't gotten around to reading it until now.
So:
On a far-future Earth, the City is three miles high and forty miles in circumference; its 25 million residents live among its 113 tiers. The City is constantly moving forward by virtue of the fact that now-ancient machinery, operated by the Structor caste, is dismantling the mass of the metropolis’s Tailend and shuttling it forward to the Frontend, where new tiers are being erected to house those displaced from Tailend.
The residents of the City have become so conditioned to generations of life indoors that they are not only physically small, but have no concept of the World outside the confines of their giant metropolis. Simply traveling from one tier to another is a days-long journey using the back-alley stairways and passages festooned throughout the City, unless one can talk their way onto the increasingly frail and over-used elevators……..
But as ‘Pilgrimage’ opens, change is coming to the City. For Brann Adelbran, a teenage boy and Tailend resident, it means that his entire tier will have to make the epochal Pilgrimage to Frontend. However, Bran’s grandmother Ebar has been filling his head with stories about the entirety of the City, its inhabitants, and the World outside. These stories suddenly become something more than idle entertainment when strange tremors shake the City, breaking conduits and passages, sending floors crashing down atop one another, triggering fear and apprehension among the residents of the tier.
Accompanied by his girlfriend Liza and his friend Halsam, Brann decides to forego the Pilgrimage, and sets out on a quest to find the Post Guild, who have free rein to travel throughout the metropolis and are best equipped to understand what is causing the disruption to the City’s structure.
As they trek through the labyrinths of the City, their journey will expose Bran and his companions to strange peoples and places……….and a final revelation about the fate of the structure that all of mankind calls Home………..
‘Pilgrimage’ is a three-star sci-fi adventure novel. It gets its world-building and its characters right, but the middle chapters tend to drag a bit as our heroes wander from one locale to another, expanding their knowledge and awareness with each encounter, but never really coming into sufficient danger to lend much intensity to the narrative.
A chapter that involves some highly mutated City dwellers with telepathic capabilities seems too contrived to be convincing, as does the prominent role played by a ‘magic’ jewel that is inert most of the time, but conveniently flares into action when our heroes find themselves in dire straits.
The verdict ? ‘Pilgrimage’ is another of those DAW novels from the early 80s (and the novels of Edward Llewellyn, such as ‘The Douglas Convolution’ come to mind) that doesn’t transform the sci-fi genre, but fits comfortably within it.
On a far-future Earth, the City is three miles high and forty miles in circumference; its 25 million residents live among its 113 tiers. The City is constantly moving forward by virtue of the fact that now-ancient machinery, operated by the Structor caste, is dismantling the mass of the metropolis’s Tailend and shuttling it forward to the Frontend, where new tiers are being erected to house those displaced from Tailend.
The residents of the City have become so conditioned to generations of life indoors that they are not only physically small, but have no concept of the World outside the confines of their giant metropolis. Simply traveling from one tier to another is a days-long journey using the back-alley stairways and passages festooned throughout the City, unless one can talk their way onto the increasingly frail and over-used elevators……..
But as ‘Pilgrimage’ opens, change is coming to the City. For Brann Adelbran, a teenage boy and Tailend resident, it means that his entire tier will have to make the epochal Pilgrimage to Frontend. However, Bran’s grandmother Ebar has been filling his head with stories about the entirety of the City, its inhabitants, and the World outside. These stories suddenly become something more than idle entertainment when strange tremors shake the City, breaking conduits and passages, sending floors crashing down atop one another, triggering fear and apprehension among the residents of the tier.
Accompanied by his girlfriend Liza and his friend Halsam, Brann decides to forego the Pilgrimage, and sets out on a quest to find the Post Guild, who have free rein to travel throughout the metropolis and are best equipped to understand what is causing the disruption to the City’s structure.
As they trek through the labyrinths of the City, their journey will expose Bran and his companions to strange peoples and places……….and a final revelation about the fate of the structure that all of mankind calls Home………..
‘Pilgrimage’ is a three-star sci-fi adventure novel. It gets its world-building and its characters right, but the middle chapters tend to drag a bit as our heroes wander from one locale to another, expanding their knowledge and awareness with each encounter, but never really coming into sufficient danger to lend much intensity to the narrative.
A chapter that involves some highly mutated City dwellers with telepathic capabilities seems too contrived to be convincing, as does the prominent role played by a ‘magic’ jewel that is inert most of the time, but conveniently flares into action when our heroes find themselves in dire straits.
The verdict ? ‘Pilgrimage’ is another of those DAW novels from the early 80s (and the novels of Edward Llewellyn, such as ‘The Douglas Convolution’ come to mind) that doesn’t transform the sci-fi genre, but fits comfortably within it.
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