What do you think?
Rate this book
The Spiral #2
The Gates of Noon
Determined to ship life-saving technology to a beleaguered island nation, Stephen Fisher ventures through the Spiral--a sphere of legends and monsters--only to find that dread forces await his coming. Reprint.
319 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
8 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Michael Scott Rohan
38 books81 followersMichael Scott Rohan (born 1951 in Edinburgh) was a Scottish fantasy and science fiction author and writer on opera.
He had a number of short stories published before his first books, the science fiction novel Run to the Stars and the non-fiction First Byte. He then collaborated with Allan J. Scott on the nonfiction The Hammer and The Cross (an account of Christianity arriving in Viking lands, not to be confused with Harry Harrison's similarly themed novel trilogy of the same name) and the fantasy novels The Ice King and A Spell of Empire.
Rohan is best known for the Ice Age-set trilogy The Winter of the World. He also wrote the Spiral novels, in which our world is the Hub, or Core, of a spiral of mythic and legendary versions of familiar cities, countries and continents.
In the "Author's Note" to The Lord of Middle Air, Rohan asserts that he and Walter Scott have a common ancestor in Michael Scot, who is a character in the novel.
[copied and adapted from en.wikipedia.org]
He had a number of short stories published before his first books, the science fiction novel Run to the Stars and the non-fiction First Byte. He then collaborated with Allan J. Scott on the nonfiction The Hammer and The Cross (an account of Christianity arriving in Viking lands, not to be confused with Harry Harrison's similarly themed novel trilogy of the same name) and the fantasy novels The Ice King and A Spell of Empire.
Rohan is best known for the Ice Age-set trilogy The Winter of the World. He also wrote the Spiral novels, in which our world is the Hub, or Core, of a spiral of mythic and legendary versions of familiar cities, countries and continents.
In the "Author's Note" to The Lord of Middle Air, Rohan asserts that he and Walter Scott have a common ancestor in Michael Scot, who is a character in the novel.
[copied and adapted from en.wikipedia.org]
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 13, 2013
Probably spoilers for Chase the Morning.
Ah Stephen. Forgotten the Spiral, really? At least it didn't happen immediately... still, it shouldn't be a surprise that your brain couldn't cope with the weirdness for very long. Too much career, too many one-night stands, to enjoy.
Until it reaches in to grab you again.
In Chase, a lot of Stephen's hollowness seems to stem from his long-ago break-up with the lovely Jacquie. Here, Stephen has got himself - and his company - involved in a project to ship the cargo of a charity irrigation system to Bali precisely because of her name. But the project is dogged by malign forces, it seems, such that they cannot organise to move it any closer to Bali than Bangkok. And with a little bit of pushing from external forces, Stephen Fisher - the Hollow Man, defeater of nasty forces last time he ventured into the Spiral - manages to find his way out of the Core again, and sets up a rather unusual method by which to deliver his cargo. It involves an ancient steamer, a seven-foot tattooed Maori, and an outlandishly mixed crew. Also another magician-type, although Ape is nothing like Le Stryge, which is about the best that Stephen can hope for. Cue adventures.
As with Chase, many of the awesome things I remembered are indeed still present. I love Rohan's descriptions of battles, and also his evocation of sailing - be it on seas or stranger tides. The very idea is still utterly captivating - sailing into the dawn or dusk, into the clouds! - as is the idea that places have shadows. Actually, perhaps they're closer to Platonic ideals, since they capture what is and was and will be; the essential nature of a place, even if never actually existed anywhere but in the imagination of very many people. And the idea of moving out into the Spiral as somehow refining people, as well as places, is also a wonderful one for story.
Also as with Chase, there are a couple of things that bugged me, and the main one was Stephen and his hang-ups. While the first book was mostly all "woe, I am a hollow man!", this book is replete with "woe, I done wrong by Jacquie!" - which he did, right enough, but I could have done with a little bit less breast-beating. He does, true enough, make some attempts at restitution - and he was pretty nasty, so maybe I should cut him some slack as his conscience actually teaches him a lesson. But I didn't have to be subjected to everything going through his head every time; it could have been indicated with a sentence or two, easily enough, especially the fourth or fifth or tenth time.
Also, bit of eye-rolling casual sexism. Irked me. It mostly does all right on the not-racist front - which, given it's set largely in South-East Asia, is a relief. There are some bits where people's mannerisms or characteristics are referred to as 'oriental,' at which I cringed a little, but on reflection those things are not usually coded negatively so... yeh, not sure what I think about that. But the inherent desire of the book is to balance tradition and 'progress', and I cannot fault that.
The other thing I cannot fault, and found also in Chase, is the very suggestion that there must be something MORE. More than career, more than sex-as-an-end, more than selfishness. Stephen finds that in action, but also in helping others; Mall and Jyp and others find it in becoming, and doing, what they are meant to be. It's a worthy aspiration.
Is it very different from Chase? Well, the intention of the adventure is different, and Stephen doesn't have to go through all the rooky, learning-to-be-on-the-Spiral stuff, so things happen a bit more immediately. There's more sexual tension; there's also more at stake, which I think made it work as a sequel. If it had been yet another "save that girl!!", I am unlikely to have bothered. Plus, quite different places and different villains, which is great.
The Suck Fairy has been kind.
Ah Stephen. Forgotten the Spiral, really? At least it didn't happen immediately... still, it shouldn't be a surprise that your brain couldn't cope with the weirdness for very long. Too much career, too many one-night stands, to enjoy.
Until it reaches in to grab you again.
In Chase, a lot of Stephen's hollowness seems to stem from his long-ago break-up with the lovely Jacquie. Here, Stephen has got himself - and his company - involved in a project to ship the cargo of a charity irrigation system to Bali precisely because of her name. But the project is dogged by malign forces, it seems, such that they cannot organise to move it any closer to Bali than Bangkok. And with a little bit of pushing from external forces, Stephen Fisher - the Hollow Man, defeater of nasty forces last time he ventured into the Spiral - manages to find his way out of the Core again, and sets up a rather unusual method by which to deliver his cargo. It involves an ancient steamer, a seven-foot tattooed Maori, and an outlandishly mixed crew. Also another magician-type, although Ape is nothing like Le Stryge, which is about the best that Stephen can hope for. Cue adventures.
As with Chase, many of the awesome things I remembered are indeed still present. I love Rohan's descriptions of battles, and also his evocation of sailing - be it on seas or stranger tides. The very idea is still utterly captivating - sailing into the dawn or dusk, into the clouds! - as is the idea that places have shadows. Actually, perhaps they're closer to Platonic ideals, since they capture what is and was and will be; the essential nature of a place, even if never actually existed anywhere but in the imagination of very many people. And the idea of moving out into the Spiral as somehow refining people, as well as places, is also a wonderful one for story.
Also as with Chase, there are a couple of things that bugged me, and the main one was Stephen and his hang-ups. While the first book was mostly all "woe, I am a hollow man!", this book is replete with "woe, I done wrong by Jacquie!" - which he did, right enough, but I could have done with a little bit less breast-beating. He does, true enough, make some attempts at restitution - and he was pretty nasty, so maybe I should cut him some slack as his conscience actually teaches him a lesson. But I didn't have to be subjected to everything going through his head every time; it could have been indicated with a sentence or two, easily enough, especially the fourth or fifth or tenth time.
Also, bit of eye-rolling casual sexism. Irked me. It mostly does all right on the not-racist front - which, given it's set largely in South-East Asia, is a relief. There are some bits where people's mannerisms or characteristics are referred to as 'oriental,' at which I cringed a little, but on reflection those things are not usually coded negatively so... yeh, not sure what I think about that. But the inherent desire of the book is to balance tradition and 'progress', and I cannot fault that.
The other thing I cannot fault, and found also in Chase, is the very suggestion that there must be something MORE. More than career, more than sex-as-an-end, more than selfishness. Stephen finds that in action, but also in helping others; Mall and Jyp and others find it in becoming, and doing, what they are meant to be. It's a worthy aspiration.
Is it very different from Chase? Well, the intention of the adventure is different, and Stephen doesn't have to go through all the rooky, learning-to-be-on-the-Spiral stuff, so things happen a bit more immediately. There's more sexual tension; there's also more at stake, which I think made it work as a sequel. If it had been yet another "save that girl!!", I am unlikely to have bothered. Plus, quite different places and different villains, which is great.
The Suck Fairy has been kind.
dnf
December 9, 2020page 10 or whatever and straight away when he gets thrust into the alternte world, a scene in which some exotic European/Asian girl (who he describes in great detail) who saved him thrusts his hand into her groin to make him stay and then practically begs him to fuck her.
Yeah, hard pass.
Yeah, hard pass.
January 30, 2021
Sequel to Chase the Morning and perhaps a slight disappointment. A decade or so since the events of the first book, Steven has all but forgotten the way to the Rim, while the girl he went sailing away into the sea of the sky to find has moved on to other things (one of the slight missteps of the book: we have to wait for a hundred pages before we even find out what happened to her). This time, Steven heads off to the east, to Bali, with a consignment called for by his lost love, only to encounter the old gods of Bali where the Rim meets the Spiral. Perhaps Rohan overdoes the prose portraits a little: the book is probably 50 pages longer than it should be and so it comes down a star in my rating.
June 3, 2021
An exciting fantasy adventure with vibrant, highly descriptive and often violent comic book style action sequences set in and around Bali and Indonesia. However, this is the author's world of an almost realistic core surrounded by a never-ending spiral of fantastical interpretations of history, mythology and even distorted realizations of Hollywood inventions.
It's well imagined and when the action gets moving the story gallops along at an impressive pace. It's just that there is so much introspection and self absorbed self criticism among the characters that the whole thing is slowed to a creeping pace far too often. I didn't really grasp the relevance of having our hero, Steve Fisher, as a lustful deputy managing director of a large logistics company on the one hand and a sword-wielding demigod on the other – but then, I have never read the first volume in the sequence, Chase the Morning. All may have been revealed there. Also it would help to have some knowledge of Hindu deities and the cultures and history of Bali and Indonesia – as in explaining why Ape contemplates and curses in Dutch. Some characters appear briefly and then annoyingly disappear from the plot: Dave Oshukwe begins as Steve's loyal sidekick then drives out of the action on page 50 and makes only one brief reappearance at the end as a voice in a phone call.
And then there is the confusing root of the plot: installing a modern water supply system on Bali. Sometimes it seems that there is antagonism between Steve, who is organizing the delivery of a vital computer system, and his love interest Jacquie, who represents the Project - that seems to be the brainchild of the international charity behind the development scheme. Sometimes the antagonism is between right thinking philanthropic nature-loving lefties and nefarious corporate schemers. Sometimes it is between archaic gods and monsters reluctant to lose power and capitalistic philosophes who want to put the public good before profits. It is often a relief when Steve sniffs a frightening entity around a corner, whips out his sword and crouches for action.
It's an enjoyable romp – when the author lets go of the moralizing - with enough feisty heroes, piratical buccaneers, and monstrous creatures red in tooth and claw to keep the inner adolescent rapt and content.
It's well imagined and when the action gets moving the story gallops along at an impressive pace. It's just that there is so much introspection and self absorbed self criticism among the characters that the whole thing is slowed to a creeping pace far too often. I didn't really grasp the relevance of having our hero, Steve Fisher, as a lustful deputy managing director of a large logistics company on the one hand and a sword-wielding demigod on the other – but then, I have never read the first volume in the sequence, Chase the Morning. All may have been revealed there. Also it would help to have some knowledge of Hindu deities and the cultures and history of Bali and Indonesia – as in explaining why Ape contemplates and curses in Dutch. Some characters appear briefly and then annoyingly disappear from the plot: Dave Oshukwe begins as Steve's loyal sidekick then drives out of the action on page 50 and makes only one brief reappearance at the end as a voice in a phone call.
And then there is the confusing root of the plot: installing a modern water supply system on Bali. Sometimes it seems that there is antagonism between Steve, who is organizing the delivery of a vital computer system, and his love interest Jacquie, who represents the Project - that seems to be the brainchild of the international charity behind the development scheme. Sometimes the antagonism is between right thinking philanthropic nature-loving lefties and nefarious corporate schemers. Sometimes it is between archaic gods and monsters reluctant to lose power and capitalistic philosophes who want to put the public good before profits. It is often a relief when Steve sniffs a frightening entity around a corner, whips out his sword and crouches for action.
It's an enjoyable romp – when the author lets go of the moralizing - with enough feisty heroes, piratical buccaneers, and monstrous creatures red in tooth and claw to keep the inner adolescent rapt and content.
November 30, 2015
The follow up to the amazing Chase the morning follows Steve and his adventures into the spiral, this time in East Asia, with delivering a container to Bali. Muddled with the activity are the past that hangs on a thread, under threat from western influence, ancient system of water sharing and characters from Ramayan coming alive. Great read.
December 6, 2010
I don't know why, maybe I've read it too quickly after the first book but it seems like there's a bit less magic in the second book. Spiral is still as dazzling as ever though and there're fascinating undercurrents in the story.
August 17, 2007
You can wander into the spiral anywhere. A beautiful fantasy story, a parable about development in the third world, a violent action filled magical adventure.
January 25, 2015
Defenestrate reason: Two copies in a box!
June 14, 2021
The Gates of Noon (The Spiral, #2)
by Michael Scott Rohan
he has to learn too find his path and his belief
by Michael Scott Rohan
he has to learn too find his path and his belief
Want to read
May 20, 2012I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/6570859
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/6570859
September 27, 2012
PArt of a trilogy, all excellent
October 14, 2015
Should never have started this book. A totally worthless Fantasy book. It should only be read by those with a special reason to do so.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews