Harm's Way

by Colin Greenland

Sophie Farthing, an orphan who grew up on a space station, emerges from her repressed upbringing to embark on a perilous journey from Earth to the Moon and across Mars searching for the origin of her birth.

Genres: Science Fiction, Steampunk, Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Space Opera, Alternate History

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Colin Greenland's fiction and criticism have been translated into a dozen languages and broadcast on BBC national radio. His multiple award-winning science fiction novel Take Back Plenty, long out of print in the UK, is available again in the Orion SF Masterworks series, and for e-readers at SF Gateway.

Colin lives in Cambridge and Foolow with his wife Susanna Clarke, the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Piranesi . He is sometimes to be found writing something, goodness knows what.

Reviews

[Annikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover image for the English paperback edition confuses me greatly.

[Marina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so I was fully expecting for this to be terrible. The prologue was surprisingly moody and set the scene for a gritty sci-fi universe; and then we were launched into the perspective of a girl who had a terrible upbringing. While I actually came to like her character, her narrative voice was inconsistent, and oftentimes frustrating. She skimmed over details I would've liked to know more about, while focusing on minutiae.

While the book was weighed down by some drudgery, and swarms of names that hurtle past you as you try to absorb them all, the science fiction ideas were really cool, and oftentimes brilliant or even scary. I was fully planning on slinging this book away for a buck after I'd finished it, but on the simple merit of those ideas, I might actually hang onto it. For a while, anyway.

Good work, Colin Greenland. You pulled it back in the second half.

[Tapani · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tarinan alku oli lupaava ja hienon mielikuvituksellinen, mutta koko kirjan keskivaihe hajosikin sitten turhan sekavaksi ja turhaksi mössöksi. Lisäksi äärimmäisen naisvihamielinen maailma ei kyllä tällä lopouratkaisulla saanut oikeutusta, ehkä maailma on muuttunut todella paljon vuodesta - 93. Aivan loppu sai taas hieman juonta kasaan, mutta oli kyllä silti harmittavan perinteinen ja yllätyksetön. Ei voi suositella tämän parissa ajan viettämistä, kun niin paljon hyviäkin kirjoja on tarjolla.

[Linnea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mikä kummallinen kirja! Avaruusooppera, seikkailuromaani, mysteeritarina, sukuselvitys.

Käytännössä orpo Sophie Farthing on elänyt lapsuutensa Yläsatamassa ja katsonut avaruuslaivojen lähtöä huolehtien vanhasta isästään. Sophie päättää selvittää totuuden äidistään ja itsestään ja päätyy erinäisten sattumusten kautta avaruuslaivan kyytiin, Maan pinnalle Lontooseen, Marsiin, Jupiterin kuulle. Paljon tapahtuu, jopa niin runsaasti että on vaikeaa erottaa mikä on merkityksellistä, onko mikään vai kenties kaikki.

Jollain tavalla viehättävän vanhanaikainen, runsaudessaan uuvuttava, maailmaltaan kiehtova.

[Alan Rylans · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of the book was interesting: Britannia rules the stars with wooden spaceships styled like sailing ships. It's the Victorian adventure of Sophie Farthing, a waif who runs away from her drunken father and the strange people that she meets, including angels on Mars. The style is wordy and towards the middle of the 364-page novel, I was stuggling. It became a slog to get to the end. I was also disappointed that it was not 'steampunk' as I had assumed. It is not a bad book but I just didn't find it stimulating.

[Iida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tää oli hyvä ja vähän erilainen lukukokemus, mikä piristi kummasti. Mietin jopa viittä tähteä, mutta kirjassa oli niin paljon henkilöitä ja tapahtumia, että olin hetkittäin vähän pihalla, niin nipistin yhden pois.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

One would think that a mash up of Neil Gaimon and Edgar Rice Burroughs might be fun. And for a while it is. But after a while, it begins to cloy.

[Konrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This rates as one of my Favourit books. Mostly it was the setting that blew me away, the whole idea of wooden ships and iron men in space, just struck the right cord at the right time. And watching sophie blosom from a timid waif into a confident young woman was a pleasure. That said there are a few things about this book that may put some readers off. Firstly this isn't steampunk, yes there are a lot of strange gadgets but they are background, largely becasue our protagonist does not see them as partiularly interesting or noteworthy. And second the story is written in the Victorian style meaning that at times descriptions are over long, and there is a fair bit of telling and contextualising of the action. On occation our protagonist also explicitly talks to the reader, and we are remainded that what we are reading are estensiably her memours.

[Karine Mon coin lecture · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one was a deception. I was waiting for something crazy, steampunk and dickensian but that's not what I found. Sure, there are fun parts, but at some moments, I felt that I couldn't care less about what would happen to Sophie and the others.

I had a "too much of too many things" feelings. Too many aliens, too many planets. Everything just mentioned, nothing explored in depth. So I stayed out. There was so many great ideas in that novel. I loved the big vessels traveling with all sails on from planet to planet. Quite a sight in my head. But that will be the only thing I will remember about the book.

I love strange worlds, I really do. It was just a bit too much for me and it made me feel like an outsider.

[David Tendo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually started reading this when I was a teenager, I couldn't get into though and I couldn't understand it, so I gave up, which is one of my regrets. Recently I decided to give it another shot, and I wasn't disappointed. It read like Dickens in space opera mode - full of creativity (schooners sailing through space on solar winds!), imagination (angel tribes and religious nuts on Mars!) and attention to detail, which is also my only gripe, there was too much detail, too much time spent on description that the pace became jumpy and uneven, so sometimes it made for a hard read. Overall, it was a lot of fun.

[Philip Chaston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A journey of the naif abroad that does not quite convey the travel undertaken. Despite the exotic vistas and tableaux described, it is the descriptions and backdrops that carry the novel, not the heroine whose arc of discovery appears to convey no moral or educational improvement. Perhaps that is Colin Greenland's intent: the irony of his approach: that knowing your parents really isn't such a big deal.

[Ketutar Jensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book. Because I read it in Finnish with this cover. Then I found it in a used books store, the English pocket version with the cheesy romance novel cover, and bought it, because I liked the book, and I wanted my non-Finnish speaking husband to read it, and his experience of the book was heavily influenced by the cheesy romance cover, and he found it really cheesy and nasty.
I think many YA readers would love it.

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out strong and had an interesting premise, but it's weighed down by too much description and not enough action. I put it down for a few days and when I had time to come back to it I just found I had a lot of other books I was far more interested in reading.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sailing ships. In space!

[Eija · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alku oli erinomainen ja kokonaisuutenakin kelpo kirja. Fantasiasävytteinen scifi tai toistepäin, helppolukuinen. 3+

[PRJ Greenwell]

Unreadable.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting ideas. An entertaining read.

[Heather Pearson · Rating 3 out of 5]

difficult writing style but fun story

[Velvetink]

*note to self. Copy from A.