Review: A Sudden Departure (April Series Book 9) by Mackey Chandler

A Sudden Departure by Mackey Chandler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Star Travel May Be Possible

This is the 9th book in a continuing series and you need to read the previous books in order to understand this one. The book ends at a natural break in the narrative but the story continues in future books. There is also a series that is set in the future of these characters, Family Law. The reading order of these two series are outlined in this post.

Earth is a mess and the spacers are just doing their best to ignore the planet, except for the trading they can do away from their biggest detractors. After April destroyed California, the book follows one family and their endeavours, as they try to survive the lack of government, infrastructure and safety. It’s almost back to frontier living in the west.

When James Weir comes to Home in order to build something at Dave’s workshop, Jeff’s curiosity is piqued. After reading an old academic paper James wrote, Jeff’s own intellect is stimulated and ideas fly out of his brain thick and fast. It could be possible for mankind to reach the stars if all the science works out. But what would happen if humanity reached the stars, would they behave any better than on Earth?

One of the things I like about this series is that it is set at the beginning of humanity’s journey into space. Man has reached the Moon and Mars but hasn’t left the solar system. A lot of Sci-Fi is set in a much more distant future when all the hard work of starting inter-stellar travel has already been sorted out, along with the ethical implications of arriving on a different planet. This series deals with the probable reality of humanity making a mess of the planet and greed takes them into space. It’s an interesting time to look at and raises all sorts of ideas.

I like the way the author takes lots of different strands and weaves them together. All the characters are taking different journeys and at times they bump into each other for short times that produce interesting ideas and movement in the story. This book has quite a lot of interesting ideas and great leaps forward in the story.

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