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Child of Earth
Book one of the Sea of Grass trilogy
Want to visit another world? It might not be as easy as you think.
When Kaer's extended family signs up to emigrate to Linnea, a planet known for horses as large as houses and dangerously mistrustful natives, Kaer is certain the move will bring the divided household closer together. What none of them are prepared for is the grueling emigration training in the Linnean dome, a makeshift environment designed to be like Linnea in every possible way, from the long, brutally harsh winters to the deadly kacks— wolf-like creatures as tall as men.The training is tough, but Kaer's family is up to the challenge. Soon they begin working like Linneans, thinking like Linneans, even accepting Linnean gods as their own. The family's emigration seems to be just around the corner.
But then, a disaster on Linnea itself changes everything.
Want to visit another world? It might not be as easy as you think.
When Kaer's extended family signs up to emigrate to Linnea, a planet known for horses as large as houses and dangerously mistrustful natives, Kaer is certain the move will bring the divided household closer together. What none of them are prepared for is the grueling emigration training in the Linnean dome, a makeshift environment designed to be like Linnea in every possible way, from the long, brutally harsh winters to the deadly kacks— wolf-like creatures as tall as men.The training is tough, but Kaer's family is up to the challenge. Soon they begin working like Linneans, thinking like Linneans, even accepting Linnean gods as their own. The family's emigration seems to be just around the corner.
But then, a disaster on Linnea itself changes everything.
- GenresScience FictionFantasy
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
13 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 26, 2021
Review to be finished later; quick thoughts:
Loved it, but the experience marred due to cliffhanger and a very long wait for the next book. Love it even more on the second reread some 15 years later because I no longer have to wait years for the next book.
It's like Little House on the Prairie on an alien planet. (I've never read Little House on the Prairie or watched the show so I don't know how true that is.) The book is about Kaer, a 12 -ish year-old girl (?), who is in love with giant horses and is training to be a colonist for the giant-horse planet, called Linnea. The plot is basically:
It doesn't sound like much, but I love it, mostly because of the worldbuilding, especially the planet's ecology, as well as the culture of its inhabitants, a lost offshoot of humanity.
I also love the Kaer's family, who have a very un-nuclear structure. They're very well written. Sweet and loving, and bonding over hardship.
The author captures the voice of a child very well, without making her overly adult, brilliant, or dumb.
Loved it, but the experience marred due to cliffhanger and a very long wait for the next book. Love it even more on the second reread some 15 years later because I no longer have to wait years for the next book.
It's like Little House on the Prairie on an alien planet. (I've never read Little House on the Prairie or watched the show so I don't know how true that is.) The book is about Kaer, a 12 -ish year-old girl (?), who is in love with giant horses and is training to be a colonist for the giant-horse planet, called Linnea. The plot is basically:
It doesn't sound like much, but I love it, mostly because of the worldbuilding, especially the planet's ecology, as well as the culture of its inhabitants, a lost offshoot of humanity.
I also love the Kaer's family, who have a very un-nuclear structure. They're very well written. Sweet and loving, and bonding over hardship.
The author captures the voice of a child very well, without making her overly adult, brilliant, or dumb.
February 10, 2024
While I love both fantasy and sci-fi equally, for some reason I read very little sci-fi. Every time I read a sci-fi book, I always tell myself I need to read more of it. Child of Earth was no exception.
Set in the future, scientists have found not only that parallel worlds exist, but how to cross over to them. Each one is a version of Earth with some small change -- however, sometimes those small changes happened thousands or millions of years ago, so it could lead to very big changes. No moons, two moons, worlds where dinosaurs never died off, worlds with a totally different atmosphere: as many differences as you can imagine.
In addition, the gate technology that connects to those other worlds can sometimes by mistake (or on purpose) force a "time slip", so more time happens on the parallel world than on ours. This was useful for places they wanted to terraform. One character compared it to cooking: You add an ingredient, then let it simmer a while, then take a taste and add something else. You could get thousands of years of terraforming done in months or years.
The book centers around Kaer (a preteen girl) and her "extended" family getting ready to go to one of those worlds. (In the future, family has become something bigger than it is now: There tended to be "family groups" made up of a couple couples, or one husband/wife and many husbands/wives. Gender was very much fluid as well, people can and did decide to be male or female, then could change again if they wanted.)
The world they were training for, Linnean, was made up of mostly grasslands -- grass more than twice as tall as the tallest men. Because of the size of the grass and the lower gravity, the world was populated by megafauna.
The science end of things was wonderfully interesting, and David Gerrold is one of those authors whose world-building is so interesting that I would be 100% fine if the book had zero plot. Which is good, as "nothing happened" through the first 80% of the book. But the lack of things happening was no down-side at all! The book was so amazingly interesting, all the things these modern people had to learn about to live on the no-technology world of Linnean.
The plot/conflict came from the native human population on Linnean. Due to one of those time slips, some scientists/techs/explorers got trapped over there, and the gate couldn't be established for thousands of years -- long enough for them to have long since forgotten Earth ever existed.
Unfortunately the book does do the one thing I hate: Ends in the middle of the story. Seriously, it's like story for this trilogy was just cut into thirds with no attempt at all to make this book self-contained at all. I hate that so much. Luckily I have the second book already, and will be reading it next, but the third book isn't published yet and I can't see the second book ending any better.
Not only do I recommend Child of Earth, I intend to read many more things by him. I can't say everything he's written, because he's been a writer for a long, long time (he wrote the Trouble with Tribbles Star Trek ep!) and he's very prolific, but I'm fully intending to read a lot more of his work.
---
Reread in 2024:
Quick synopsis : Humanity has discovered how to open gateways to other worlds and has begun training families to go live on them.
Plot : Until the last 8% or so, there was very little plot in this book. The whole thing was one extended family training to go live on another planet and fit in with a culture that knew nothing of Earth. They had to learn how to build a house, how to speak the language, what gestures to use, every little part of life in a completely alien culture.
Near the very end of the book, one of the scouts on the alien planet was taken hostage. That started a plot to rescue him.
Writing/editing : Both were passable. Writing was fine, editing was okay. Biggest issue was that the book is incomplete: It ended right in the middle of a scene, continuing in book 2. That's not okay.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like : I loved this book the first time I read it, but it didn't work nearly so well for me now. While the worldbuilding was great (having no plot through most of the book wasn't an issue at all!), so many of the characters' actions just didn't make sense and weren't believable.
More than that, the fact that this alien planet was somehow populated by a small handful of humans (centuries later there were cities full of humans... were they all horribly inbred?) and that it evolved into the Dark Ages (the ultra-religious society burning "witches"). It was so unbelievable.
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved : 3.75-4-ish (It's my system and I'll be wishy-washy if I want to be!) I mostly enjoyed reading it, even if there was a lot of unbelievable stuff in it.
Set in the future, scientists have found not only that parallel worlds exist, but how to cross over to them. Each one is a version of Earth with some small change -- however, sometimes those small changes happened thousands or millions of years ago, so it could lead to very big changes. No moons, two moons, worlds where dinosaurs never died off, worlds with a totally different atmosphere: as many differences as you can imagine.
In addition, the gate technology that connects to those other worlds can sometimes by mistake (or on purpose) force a "time slip", so more time happens on the parallel world than on ours. This was useful for places they wanted to terraform. One character compared it to cooking: You add an ingredient, then let it simmer a while, then take a taste and add something else. You could get thousands of years of terraforming done in months or years.
The book centers around Kaer (a preteen girl) and her "extended" family getting ready to go to one of those worlds. (In the future, family has become something bigger than it is now: There tended to be "family groups" made up of a couple couples, or one husband/wife and many husbands/wives. Gender was very much fluid as well, people can and did decide to be male or female, then could change again if they wanted.)
The world they were training for, Linnean, was made up of mostly grasslands -- grass more than twice as tall as the tallest men. Because of the size of the grass and the lower gravity, the world was populated by megafauna.
The science end of things was wonderfully interesting, and David Gerrold is one of those authors whose world-building is so interesting that I would be 100% fine if the book had zero plot. Which is good, as "nothing happened" through the first 80% of the book. But the lack of things happening was no down-side at all! The book was so amazingly interesting, all the things these modern people had to learn about to live on the no-technology world of Linnean.
The plot/conflict came from the native human population on Linnean. Due to one of those time slips, some scientists/techs/explorers got trapped over there, and the gate couldn't be established for thousands of years -- long enough for them to have long since forgotten Earth ever existed.
Unfortunately the book does do the one thing I hate: Ends in the middle of the story. Seriously, it's like story for this trilogy was just cut into thirds with no attempt at all to make this book self-contained at all. I hate that so much. Luckily I have the second book already, and will be reading it next, but the third book isn't published yet and I can't see the second book ending any better.
Not only do I recommend Child of Earth, I intend to read many more things by him. I can't say everything he's written, because he's been a writer for a long, long time (he wrote the Trouble with Tribbles Star Trek ep!) and he's very prolific, but I'm fully intending to read a lot more of his work.
---
Reread in 2024:
Quick synopsis : Humanity has discovered how to open gateways to other worlds and has begun training families to go live on them.
Plot : Until the last 8% or so, there was very little plot in this book. The whole thing was one extended family training to go live on another planet and fit in with a culture that knew nothing of Earth. They had to learn how to build a house, how to speak the language, what gestures to use, every little part of life in a completely alien culture.
Near the very end of the book, one of the scouts on the alien planet was taken hostage. That started a plot to rescue him.
Writing/editing : Both were passable. Writing was fine, editing was okay. Biggest issue was that the book is incomplete: It ended right in the middle of a scene, continuing in book 2. That's not okay.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like : I loved this book the first time I read it, but it didn't work nearly so well for me now. While the worldbuilding was great (having no plot through most of the book wasn't an issue at all!), so many of the characters' actions just didn't make sense and weren't believable.
More than that, the fact that this alien planet was somehow populated by a small handful of humans (centuries later there were cities full of humans... were they all horribly inbred?) and that it evolved into the Dark Ages (the ultra-religious society burning "witches"). It was so unbelievable.
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved : 3.75-4-ish (It's my system and I'll be wishy-washy if I want to be!) I mostly enjoyed reading it, even if there was a lot of unbelievable stuff in it.
November 4, 2007
This is the story of a family who decides to train to be shipped through a gate to settle in an alternate world called the Horse World. Otherwise very similar to the world we know, it's gravity is slightly less and so the creatures there have evolved to be in many cases larger. Here terraforming had been started when a bubble in spacetime caused the alternate world to experience more time than the home world. Human society originating from the original exploration crew has since adapted to the environment and must be treated gentry as they no longer believe in Earth/the original home world.
I am really picky about the fact that my science fiction has to be at least self-consistent, but so much the better if it really explores the consequences of the differences in its setting from the world we know. I am happy to say that this book was really satisfying on both accounts. I immediately went to add the next book in the series to my wishlist, only to discover that it is not even on Amazon yet to pre-order. I will be awaiting it impatiently.
I am really picky about the fact that my science fiction has to be at least self-consistent, but so much the better if it really explores the consequences of the differences in its setting from the world we know. I am happy to say that this book was really satisfying on both accounts. I immediately went to add the next book in the series to my wishlist, only to discover that it is not even on Amazon yet to pre-order. I will be awaiting it impatiently.
September 19, 2014
I'd give it 3 stars if it had an ending.
This is an idea book, which means it's about 80% info-dump. Still, what story there is is good. It's well written, and the characters are interesting. The language jumps back and forth a bit, between somewhat advanced for a ten-year-old narrator, and perfectly appropriate. The culture and the world Gerrold is creating are good ones, worth exploring, though possibly not in quite so much detail. It's a bit heavy on the religious themes, and tends to hit one over the head with its ideas.
I found the story, particularly as it left off, intriguing enough to go looking for the next one. Unfortunately, in spite of having a May 2014 pub date, the book lists as 'out of print' and isn't available in my library system. That paired with the apparent increase in both religion and head-hitting (per the synopsis on amazon) leaves me less inclined to bother.
Not to mention I'd only then have to wait for book 3. Given 9 years between 1 and 2, assuming 2 actually exists, I don't hold out much hope for a conclusion to this story.
This is an idea book, which means it's about 80% info-dump. Still, what story there is is good. It's well written, and the characters are interesting. The language jumps back and forth a bit, between somewhat advanced for a ten-year-old narrator, and perfectly appropriate. The culture and the world Gerrold is creating are good ones, worth exploring, though possibly not in quite so much detail. It's a bit heavy on the religious themes, and tends to hit one over the head with its ideas.
I found the story, particularly as it left off, intriguing enough to go looking for the next one. Unfortunately, in spite of having a May 2014 pub date, the book lists as 'out of print' and isn't available in my library system. That paired with the apparent increase in both religion and head-hitting (per the synopsis on amazon) leaves me less inclined to bother.
Not to mention I'd only then have to wait for book 3. Given 9 years between 1 and 2, assuming 2 actually exists, I don't hold out much hope for a conclusion to this story.
May 23, 2008
This is the start of a really promising trilogy. The idea of having to move an entire family to a new world with the adoption of the native culture and the subjugation of the birth culture is told in a very realistic way. The story moves at a nice pace and most of the chapters are short. I am looking forward to the rest of the books. Now the bad news; David Gerrold is a very frustrating author to follow. He has a tendency to start a series of books and then never finish them. (The War of Chtorr books were started in 1983, #5 of #7 was supposed to be published in 2000. In reality nothing has been published since 1993.) This book was published in 2005 and there are no more books. The man isn't getting any younger and I am certain that he will not be finishing all of these story lines that he has started. It's such a problem that had I known there were no more books, I would not have read this.
December 30, 2018
Highly recommended
I don't say this carelessly, but this is as good as anything Heinlein wrote. This book is well worth the time and money!
I don't say this carelessly, but this is as good as anything Heinlein wrote. This book is well worth the time and money!
April 2, 2023
4.5 stars Short but sweet. Interesting and unusual ideas. I’m looking forward to the next instalment.
It doesn’t waste time with unnecessary padding which is a refreshing change.
It doesn’t waste time with unnecessary padding which is a refreshing change.
February 22, 2012
Recommended to me as an good example of anthropological SF, I highly enjoyed this book. It was full of ideas and had great world-building.
(Not really similar to either of these author's oeuvres, but it made me think of Madeline L'Engle and Sheri S. Tepper.)
Later: Oh, how frustrating! This book ends on a cliff-hanger, and a chapter of the next book is given as well as a title. And a very intriguing plot teaser it is. HOWEVER, there seems to be no sequel. Yet. If ever.
This book is self-published so who knows why. But be warned, you will be left dangling wondering what happens to Kaer and co.
(Not really similar to either of these author's oeuvres, but it made me think of Madeline L'Engle and Sheri S. Tepper.)
Later: Oh, how frustrating! This book ends on a cliff-hanger, and a chapter of the next book is given as well as a title. And a very intriguing plot teaser it is. HOWEVER, there seems to be no sequel. Yet. If ever.
This book is self-published so who knows why. But be warned, you will be left dangling wondering what happens to Kaer and co.
March 2, 2012
Wanted things to move just a bit faster, but it had a great ending and a nice set up for the rest of the series!
May 15, 2024
3 stars
A really interesting story if a bit crass at times about a family preparing to be colonists on a terraformed planet.
A really interesting story if a bit crass at times about a family preparing to be colonists on a terraformed planet.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews