Official Blurb
It is 30,000 years following dramatically changed climate conditions on earth which had let massive amounts of carbon dioxide belch from the interior of the planet into the atmosphere. Over the millenia this would have quite devastating effects on life as it had once been known. Much of the human and animal population would not survive the climate change, and indeed those few humans who did survive knew nothing of all which their predecessors had learned and built. Indeed, they knew not even of their existence. On the other hand insects and fungi would flourish over time.
And so those few remaining humans were unknowingly at the very beginning of the building of a tribal society, which at the time of the story of Burl simply meant food and survival. And so it was Burl who chose to travel beyond his small tribal community in an effort to hunt for something new and different to hopefully impress Saya, the young female of his tribe to whom he felt a peculiar attraction. The Mad Planet is Burl's adventure.
My Review
The world of our protagonist is quite frankly revolting, full of insects and fungus and not a lot else. The sky is always dark, the hunt for food is constant and death near at hand in a myriad of forms.
The hero of the piece is ripped away from his home by accident and then wanders back, and that's about as much as I can say about this story. Although nominally set in the future it's a dark ages story... hang on, story is too grand a word really. There's no plot to speak of. It's really a protagonist wandering along and looking at the world around him with a couple of minor life threatening hiccups thrown in.
I can not reccommend this book. I "just" managed to get through it, and kept hoping something, anything really, would happen, alas the plot never appeared. If the reader hadn't been as good as they were, I would have given up on it.
Reading 2/3
Production 2/3
Story 1/3
Total Score 5/9
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