#111. ENGINE SUMMER By John Crowley

Published : 1979
Pages : 238
Overall Mark : 7/10

In the drowsy tranquillity of Little Belaire, the Truthful Speakers lead lives of peaceful self-sufficiency, ignoring the depopulated wilderness beyond their narrow borders. It is a society untouched by pain or violence, and the past is barely remembered. But when Rush That Speaks leaves his home on a pilgrimage of self-enlightenment, he finds a landscape haunted by myths and memories. The overgrown ruins reflect a world outside that is stranger than his people ever dreamed…

JOHN CROWLEY (1942-)
John Crowley was born in Maine in 1942 and grew up in Vermont, Kentucky and Indiana before moving to New York and taking up work in documentary films – an occupation he still pursues alongside his writing. The Deep, his first SF novel, was published in 1975 and was followed by Beasts, Engine Summer and Great Work of Time. With the publication of Little, Big in 1981 he won the World Fantasy Award and was shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula and BSFA Awards.

VERDICT
This is an odd novel that I couldn't really get into. The idea is original, and the characters motivations are interesting, but basically it is a road story that doesn't feel like it goes anywhere. It does have its merits, and in spite of not being a wholly orignal story, with some comparisons being made to Walter M Miller's A Canticle For Liebowitz, this does give an interesting perspective to a futre without technology, and that has forgotten how the world used to be.