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Review

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Four Hundred Billion Stars

Paul J. McAuley

1988

Gollancz






Review by Peter Young on Live Journal (March 2007).


Japanese astronomer Dorthy Yoshida is drafted into the war against the alien 'Enemy' because of her telepathic Talent, and is posted to a remote world where a species exists that may or may not be the Enemy in question. But something else is out there which Dorthy's telepathy shows has a far greater presence and influence. McAuley's scientific rigour often makes the storytelling in this first novel rather too functional, not indulging in many flights of imagination or even colourful descriptive passages. The elusive aliens are also somewhat less than exotic but the story does eventually take flight, possessing a bravura sensawunda that its title suggests in the last fifty pages.